AT THE THEATRE.

"There, too, I saw some mighty pritty shows;
A revolution, without blood or blows,
For, as I understand, the cunning elves,

The people, all revolted from themselves."

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Washington smiled, but he looked grave and uneasy, expecting some personal adulation, which always annoyed him, when Darby, alluding to the President at the inauguration, said:

"A man who fought to free the land from woe,
Like me, had left his farm a soldiering to go,
But having gained his point, he had, like me,
Returned, his own potato ground to see,

But there he would not rest; with one accord
He's called to be a kind of-not a lord-
I don't know what; he's not a great man, sure,
For poor men love him just as he were poor,
They love him like a father or a brother-"

But when Kathleen here broke in and asked,

'How looked he, Darby? was he stout or tall?”

and Darby answered that he had not seen him, because he had mistaken a man

'All lace and glitter, botherum and shine,"

for the President, until the show had passed, there was a burst of merriment from the audience, in which Washington. and his party heartily joined.

The orchestra on that occasion introduced a fresh and pleasing feature into their performance. Mr. Fayles, a German musician, had, at the request of manager Wignell, composed a piece of music called "The President's March." It was lively and stately in character, and was played for

the first time on the occasion we are considering, when the general with Mrs. Washington led the way into his stage box. This circumstance intensified the applause which greeted the President. So soon as this march was played, the audience, which held many soldiers and sailors, called with a hundred voices for their favorite air, "Washington's March," which the fife and drum had made familiar to their ears. "The President's March" is now known as "Hail Columbia," the song (so called from the first two words of its first line) having been adapted to the air.

When the first session of the First Congress adjourned, at the close of September, Washington resolved to visit the Eastern States during the recess of the National Legislature. He desired Mrs. Washington to accompany him on this tour, but she would not relinquish the care of her grandchildren even for so brief a period as the journey promised to occupy. She remained at the presidential mansion during her husband's absence.

The President left New York on the morning of the 15th of October, 1789, in his chariot drawn by four spirited bay horses, which were raised at Mount Vernon. He was accompanied by his two secretaries, Tobias Lear and Major William Jackson, on horseback. The chief-justice (John Jay), Colonel Hamilton, General Knox, and one or two other gentlemen rode with them as far as Rye, in Westchester County. His tour extended as far east as Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, and returning he reached New York on the 13th of November. In his diary for that day he wrote:

"Breakfasted at Hoyt's, this side of Kingsbridge, and between two and three o'clock arrived at my house, where I found Mrs. Washington and the rest of the family all well—

and it being Mrs. Washington's night to receive visits, a pretty large company of ladies and gentlemen were present." The President had avoided Rhode Island in this tour, because that State had not ratified the National Constitution, and it was considered as an essentially foreign commonwealth. It entered the union in May the next year, and the President visited it in the autumn following, proceeding by water from New York to Newport in quest of benefit to his health.

Soon after his arrival in New York, in the spring of 1789, the President ordered a coach from England. It was not received until near the close of the year. The first mention of it in his diary was on December 12th: "Exercised in the coach with Mrs. Washington and the two children. (Master and Miss Custis), between breakfast and dinnerwent the fourteen miles round."* Previous to this date he mentioned riding in “a coach"-probably a hired one-and in the "post-chaise," the vehicle in which he usually travelled between Mount Vernon and New York.

The English coach was one of the finest in the city, and attracted much attention when abroad with the President and his family. It was drawn by four spirited bay horses, governed by a driver and a postilion, both in livery, and accompanied by outriders. The coach was of a cream color, and was suspended on heavy leather straps resting

*The "fourteen miles round" was by the old Kingsbridge Road, which passed over Murray Hill, where Lexington Avenue now does, to McGowan's Pass, at about One Hundred and Eighth Street: then across, on a line with the Harlem River to Bloomingdale, near the Hudson, and so down on the westerly side of the island by the Bloomingdale road and the Broadway.