Mrs.
Adams, with her cheerful, intelligent face. She was placed between the
Count du Moustier, the French Ambassador, in his red-healed shoes and
earrings, and the grave, polite, and formally bowing Mr. Van Birket,
the learned and able envoy of Holland. There, too, was Chancellor
Livingston, then still in the prime of life, so deaf as to make
conversation with him difficult, yet so overflowing with wit,
eloquence and information that while listening to him the difficulty
was forgotten. The rest were members of Congress, and of our
Legislature, some of them no inconsiderable men. Being able to talk
French, a rare accomplishment in America at that time, a place was
assigned to me next the count."

Verplanck goes on to describe the dinner. He says that it was a very
grand affair, bountiful and elaborately served, but the French
Ambassador would taste nothing. He took a spoonful or two of soup but
refused everything else "from the roast beef down to the lobsters."
Everyone was concerned, for that was a day of trenchermen, and only
serious illness kept people from eating their dinners. At last the
door opened and his own private _chef_,--quaintly described by
Verplanck as "his body-cook,"--rushed into the room pushing the
waiters right and left before him, and placed triumphantly upon the
table an immense pie of game and truffles, still hot from the oven.
This obviously had been planned as a pleasant surprise for the hosts.
Du Moustier took a small helping himself and divided the rest among
the others. The chronicler adds, "I can attest to the truth of the
story and the excellence of the _pate_!"

No one doubts the courteous intentions of the Count, but something
tells me that that excellent housewife and incomparable hostess,
Mistress Adams, was not enchanted by the unexpected addition to her
delicious and carefully planned menu!

It is Verplanck, by the bye, who has put in a peculiarly succinct way
one of the most signal characteristics of New York--its lightning-like
evolution.

"In this city especially," he says, "the progress of a few years
effect what in Europe is the work of centuries." A shrewd and happily
tongued observer, is Mr. Verplanck; we shall have occasion, I believe,
to refer to him again.

The Adams' occupancy of Richmond Hill House was, we must be convinced,
a very happy one. It was a house of a flexible and versatile
personality, a beautiful home, an important headquarters of many state
affairs, a