The third point was in regard to dinner parties. The presidents of
Congress hitherto had asked every one to dine, and had ended by
keeping a sort of public table, to the waste of both time and dignity.
Many persons, disgusted with this system, thought that the President
ought not to ask anybody to dinner. But Washington, never given to
extremes, decided that he would invite to dinner persons of official
rank and strangers of distinction, but no one else, and that he would
accept no invitations for himself. After a time he arranged to have a
reception every Tuesday, from three to four in the afternoon, and Mrs.
Washington held a similar levee on Fridays. These receptions, with a
public dinner every week, were all the social entertainments for which
the President had either time or health.
By these sensible and apparently unimportant arrangements, Washington
managed to give free access to every one who was entitled to it, and
yet preserved the dignity and reserve due to his office. It was one
of the real although unmarked services which he rendered to the new
government, and which contributed so much to its establishment, for it
would have been very easy to have lowered the presidential office by a
false idea of republican simplicity. It would have been equally easy
to have made it odious by a cold seclusion on the one hand, or by pomp
and ostentation on the other. With his usual good judgment and perfect
taste, Washington steered between the opposing dangers, and yet
notwithstanding the wisdom of his arrangements, and in spite of
their simplicity, he did not escape calumny on account of them.
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