table. The term "muslin horses" was commonly used
to denote the care taken in grooming. The head groom would test the work
of the stable-boys by applying a clean muslin handkerchief to the coats of
the animals, and, if any stain of dirt showed, there was trouble. The
night before the white horses which Washington used as President were to
be taken out, their coats were covered by a paste of whiting, and the
animals were swathed in wrappings. In the morning the paste was dry and
with rubbing gave a marble gloss to the horses' coats. The hoofs were then
blackened and polished, and even the animals' teeth were scoured. Such
arrangements, however, were not peculiar to Washington's stable. This was
the usual way in which grooming for "the quality" was done in that period.

The first house occupied by Washington was at the corner of Pearl and
Cherry streets, then a fashionable locality. What the New York end of the
Brooklyn Bridge has left of it is now known as Franklin Square. The house
was so small that three of his secretaries had to lodge in one room; and
Custis in his Recollections tells how one of them, who fancied he could
write poetry, would sometimes disturb the others by walking the floor in
his nightgown trying the rhythm of his lines by rehearsing them with loud
emphasis. About a year later Washington removed to a larger house on the
west side of Broadway near Bowling Green. Both buildings went down at an
early date before the continual march of improvement in New York. In
Washington's time Wall Street was superseding Pearl Street as the
principal haunt of fashion. Here lived Alexander Hamilton and other New
Yorkers prominent in their day; here were fashionable boarding-houses at
which lived the leading members of Congress. When some fashionable
reception was taking place, the street was gay with coaches and
sedan-chairs, and the attire of the people who then gathered was as
brilliant as a flight of cockatoos. It was a period of spectacular dress
and behavior for both men and women, the men rivaling the women in their
use of lace, silk, and satin. Dr. John Bard, the fashionable doctor of his
day, who attended Washington through the severe illness which laid him up
for six weeks early in his administration, habitually wore a cocked hat
and a scarlet coat, his hands resting upon a massive cane as he drove
about in a pony-phaeton. The scarlet waistcoat with large bright buttons
which Jefferson wore on fine occasions, w