Page:Lamb - History of the city of New York - Volume 3.djvu/25

 355 point to point, and the narrow sidewalks were filled with pedestrians stepping briskly along as if impelled by some unusual and agreeable impulse. The custom of making New Year’s calls was one of the peculiar institutions of New York. It was a novelty to Washington. It had been introduced by the Dutch with the first settlement on Manhattan Island, and the Huguenots had helped to perpetuate the pleasant observance. No other American city or town had then even so much as thought of borrowing the fashion — and it was likely to find little favor in places more purely of English origin and population.

Between the hours of twelve and three o’clock the President was visited by the Vice-President, the governor, the senators, and representatives, foreign public characters, and all the principal gentlemen of the city, either in public or private life. Later in the afternoon a great number of gentlemen and ladies visited Mrs. Washington, as usual, the day being Friday. In the evening such guests as remained were seated and served to tea, coffee, and plum and plain cake. We can almost see Washington in the flesh, as, balancing in his hand one of the exquisite cups and saucers for which his table was famous, he asked of a New-Yorker near him whether such usages were casual or otherwise, and being told that New Year’s visiting had always been maintained in the city, observed: “The highly favored situation of New York will, in the process of years, attract numerous emigrants, who will gradually change its ancient customs and manners; but whatever changes take place, never forget the cordial and cheerful observance of New Year’s Day.”

John Pintard, then a young man of fashion, says many persons took advantage of the day to pay their respects to Washington who were personally unacquainted with him, but no one complained of the stateliness which about this time alarmed a sagacious Virginia colonel for the safety of the Republic. The latter stated at the table of Governor Randolph that Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff” than any he had seen at the Court of St. James! The critic’s words reached Washington’s ears, who calmly expressed his sorrow that his bows should not have been acceptable, as they were the best he was master of. “Would it not have been better,” he asked, “to throw the veil of charity over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects of age, or to the unskillfulness of my teacher, rather than to pride and dignity of office?”

New York City was then regarded by all good puritanical New-Englanders as a “vortex of folly and dissipation.” But the mother of Oliver Wolcott, on the same New Year’s evening while Mrs. Washington was dispensing, hospitalities, holding an open letter in her hand written from the capital eleven days before by her subsequently distinguished son, read