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[30] the result of President Adams's introduction. I looked very much like a fool, I have no doubt, for I felt very awkwardly.

As in the drawing-room before dinner, no one was bold enough to venture conversation. The President did not apparently know the guest on his right, nor the one opposite to him. . . . Mrs. Madison is a large, dignified lady, with excellent manners, obviously well practised in the ways of the world. Her conversation was somewhat formal, but on the whole appropriate to her position, and now and then amusing. I found the President more free and open than I expected, starting subjects of conversation and making remarks that sometimes savored of humor and levity. He sometimes laughed, and I was glad to hear it; but his face was always grave. He talked of religious sects and parties, and was curious to know how the cause of liberal Christianity stood with us, and if the Athanasian creed was well received by our Episcopalians. He pretty distinctly intimated to me his own regard for the Unitarian doctrines. The conversation, however, was not confined to religion; he talked of education and its prospects, of the progress of improvement among us, and once or twice he gave it a political aspect, though with great caution. He spoke of Inchiquin's letters and the reply to them, but gave no opinion as to the truth or merits of either; and of Jeffrey, the editor of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ whose name, when he had mentioned it, seemed to strike him with a sudden silence. I promise you I was careful in my replies, and did not suffer him to know that I had ever seen Jeffrey or his journal. He spoke to me of my visit to Monticello, and, when the party was separating, told me if I would go with him to the drawing-room and take coffee, his Secretary would give me the directions I desired. So I had another tete-à--tete with Mr.Madison and Mrs. Madison, in the course of which Mr. M. gave amusing stories of early religious persecutions in Virginia, and Mrs. M. entered into a defence and panegyric of the Quakers, to whose sect, you know, she once belonged. . . . At eight o'clock I took my leave.


To Edward T. Channing, Boston.

Georgetown, D. C., January 22, 1815.
At the Headquarters of the assembled wisdom of the nation, I suppose, dear Edward, you will expect from me something on politics; and, if I write you anything, it must be about the last act or the last rumor, for such things here never survive the day or the hour that produced them. The last remarkable event in the history of this remarkable Congress is Dallas's Report. You can imagine nothing


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