ton gave account of the
origin of his levees: "Before the custom was established," he wrote,
"which now accommodates foreign characters, strangers, and others, who,
from motives of curiosity, respect for the chief magistrate, or other
cause, are induced to call upon me, I was unable to attend to any
business whatever; for gentlemen, consulting their own convenience
rather than mine, were calling after the time I rose from breakfast, and
often before, until I sat down to dinner. This, as I resolved not to
neglect my public duties, reduced me to the choice of one of these
alternatives: either to refuse visits altogether, or to appropriate a
time for the reception of them.... To please everybody was impossible.
I, therefore, adopted that line of conduct which combined public
advantage with private convenience.... These visits are optional, they
are made without invitation; between the hours of three and four every
Tuesday I am prepared to receive them. Gentlemen, often in great
numbers, come and go, chat with each other, and act as they please. A
porter shows them into the room, and they retire from it when they
choose, without ceremony. At their first entrance they salute me, and I
them, and as many as I can talk to."

An English gentleman, after visiting President Washington, wrote: "There
was a commanding air in his appearance which excited respect and forbade
too great a freedom toward him, independently of that species of awe
which is always felt in the moral influence of a great character? In
every movement, too, there was a polite gracefulness equal to any met
with in the most polished individuals of Europe, and his smile was
extraordinarily attractive.... It struck me no man could be better
formed for command. A stature of six feet, a robust but
well-proportioned frame calculated to stand fatigue, without that
heaviness which generally attends great muscular strength and abates
active exertion, displayed bodily power of no mean standard. A light eye
and full--the very eye of genius and reflection. His nose appeared
thick, and though it befitted his other features, was too coarsely and
strongly formed to be the handsomest of its class. His mouth was like no
other I ever saw: the lips firm, and the under jaw seeming to grasp the
upper with force, as if its muscles were in full action when he sat
still."

Such Washington appeared to those who saw and knew him. Such he remains
to our vision. His memory is held by us