is honor.

He was then obliged to write to the Home Secretary, "We have met the
enemy, and we are theirs"--but of course he did not express it just
exactly that way. Then it was that King George, for the first time, showed
a disposition to negotiate for peace.

As peace commissioners, America named Franklin, John Adams, Laurens, Jay
and Jefferson.

Jefferson refused to leave his wife, who was in delicate health. Adams was
at The Hague, just closing up a very necessary loan. Laurens had been sent
to Holland on a diplomatic mission, and his ship having been overhauled by
a British man-of-war, he was safely in that historic spot, the Tower of
London.

So Jay and Franklin alone met the English commissioners, and Jay stated to
them the conditions of peace.

In a few weeks Adams arrived, still keeping a diary. In that diary is
found this item: "The French call me 'Le Washington de la Negociation': a
very flattering compliment indeed, to which I have no right, but sincerely
think it belongs to Mr. Jay."

Jay quitted Paris in May, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, having been gone
from his native land eight years. When he reached New York there was a
great demonstration in his honor. Triumphal arches were erected across
Broadway, houses and stores were decorated with bunting, cannons boomed,
and bells rang. The freedom of the city was presented to him in a gold
box, with an exceedingly complimentary address, engrossed on parchment,
and signed by one hundred of the leading citizens.

Jay spent just one day in New York, and then rode on horseback up to the
old farm at Rye, Westchester County, to see his father. That evening there
was a service of thanksgiving at the village church, after which the
citizens repaired to the Jay mansion, one story high and eighty feet long,
where a barrel of cider was tapped, and "a groce of Church Wardens" passed
around, with free tobacco for all.

John Jay stood on the front porch and made a modest speech just five
minutes long, among other things saying he had come home to be a neighbor
to them, having quit public life for good. But he refused to talk about
his own experiences in Europe. His reticence, however, was made up for by
good old Peter Jay, who assured the people that John Jay was America's
foremost citizen; and in this statement he was backed up by the village
preacher, with not a dissenting voice from the assembled citizens.

It is rather curious (or it isn't, I'm not sure which