Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/77

ments that were spun and woven by her servants at Mount Vernon. At a ball in New Jersey that was given in her honor she wore one of these simple gowns and a white kerchief, "as an example of economy to the women of the Revolution." Her last surviving child, John Parke Custis, died in November, 1781, leaving four children. The two younger, Eleanor Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis, Gen. Washington at once adopted. After Mrs. Washington left headquarters at Newburgh in 1782, she did not again return to camp life. She was residing at Mount Vernon at the time Washington was chosen president of the United States. When she assumed the duties of mistress of the executive mansion in New York she was fifty-seven years old, but still retained traces of beauty, and bore herself with great personal dignity. She instituted levees, that she ever afterward continued, on Friday evening of each week from eight to nine o'clock. "None were admitted but those who had a right of entrance by official station or established character," and full dress was required. During the second term of the president they resided in Philadelphia, where their public receptions were conducted as those in New York had been. An English gentleman, describing her at her own table in 1794, says: "Mrs. Washington struck me as being older than the president. She was extremely simple in dress,