The
President, after the company had assembled, entered in full official
costume: black velvet and satin, diamond knee-buckles, his hair in a bag
and tied with ribbons. He carried a military hat under his arm, and wore
a dress sword in a green shagreen scabbard. He made a tour of the room,
addressing each guest in turn, all being ranged according to their rank.
At his wife's levees he attended as a private individual and mingled
more freely with the guests; but his presence always lowered every voice
in the room, and women trembled with anxiety lest he should not engage
them in conversation, while dreading that he might. The unparalleled
dignity, the icy reserve of his personality, had always affected the
temperature of the gatherings he honoured; but at this time, when to the
height of a colossal and unique reputation was added the first
incumbency of an office, bestowed by a unanimous sentiment, which was to
raise the United States to the plane of the great nations of Europe, he
was instinctively regarded as superhuman, rather as a human embodiment
of the Power beyond space.
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