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[38] authority of a State in one branch, and the executive authority in another, and leaving them to govern it by joint discretion,—I considered such opinions simply as curious indicia of an extraordinary character.


Georgetown, February 19, 1815.
. . . . This evening, Mr. Sullivan, Colonel Perkins, and myself passed delightfully at Mr. Thomas Peter's, who married Miss Nellie Custis, granddaughter of Mrs. Washington, whom you see in the picture of ‘The Washington Family.’ They are both of the Boston stamp in politics; and while Mr. Peter, as an extraordinary treat for an extraordinary occasion, regaled the ‘delegates’ with a bottle of wine from General Washington's cellar, Mrs. Peter gave me an account of her grandfather's mode of life and intercourse with his family. He rose at six during the whole year, and breakfasted precisely at seven in the summer and at eight in winter. After breakfast he went to his study for an hour, which he devoted to writing letters; then rode out, and was absent on his plantation till two; returned and dressed for dinner carefully; sat down to table at three, without waiting for any guests whom he might have invited; remained at table all the afternoon, if there were strangers who could claim such civility, but otherwise retired soon to his study; came to tea at seven or eight, and finished the evening with his family and friends.

Mrs. Peter also gave us, with a good deal of vivacity, the best account I have ever heard of the proceedings of the British at the capture of Washington; for, as she said, she was too much of a Tory to run, and therefore was an eyewitness of what happened. Of her politics you may judge by the names of her daughters, one of whom she has called Columbia Washington, another America Pinkney, and a third Britannia Wellington. What familiar abbreviations they use in common parlance for those names I did not venture to inquire. . . . .


Georgetown, February, 1815.
I passed the whole of this morning in the Supreme Court. The room in which the Judges are compelled temporarily to sit is, like everything else that is official, uncomfortable, and unfit for the purposes for which it is used. They sat—I thought inconveniently— at the upper end; but, as they were all dressed in flowing black robes, and were fully powdered, they looked dignified. Judge Marshall is such as I described him to you in Richmond; Judge Washington is a little, sharp-faced gentleman, with only one eye, and a profusion of


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