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Washington's Birthday by Various
page 99 of 297 (33%)
Congress, at the head of the army, he seemed ever to be just what the
situation required. He possessed, in a degree never equaled by any human
being I ever saw, the strongest, most ever-present sense of propriety."

In the early part of Washington's administration, great complaints were
made by political opponents of the aristocratic and royal demeanor of
the President. Particularly, these complaints were about the manner of
his receiving visitors. In a letter Washington 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
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