Nor did his hearing remain entirely good. Maclay noted, at one of the
President's dinners in 1789, that "he seemed in more good humor than I
ever saw him, though he was so deaf that I believe he heard little of the
conversation," and three years later the President is reported as saying
to Jefferson that he was "sensible, too, of a decay of his hearing,
perhaps his other faculties might fall off and he not be sensible of it."

Washington's teeth were even more troublesome. Mercer in 1760 alluded to
his showing, when his mouth was open, "some defective teeth," and as early
as 1754 one of his teeth was extracted. From this time toothache, usually
followed by the extraction of the guilty member, became almost of yearly
recurrence, and his diary reiterates, with verbal variations, "indisposed
with an aching tooth, and swelled and inflamed gum," while his ledger
contains many items typified by "To Dr. Watson drawing a tooth 5/." By
1789 he was using false teeth, and he lost his last tooth in 1795. At
first these substitutes were very badly fitted, and when Stuart painted
his famous picture he tried to remedy the malformation they gave the mouth
by padding under the lips with cotton. The result was to make bad worse,
and to give, in that otherwise fine portrait, a feature at once poor and
unlike Washington, and for this reason alone the Sharpless miniature,
which in all else approximates so closely to Stuart's masterpiece, is
preferable. In 1796 Washington was furnished with two sets of "sea-horse"
(_i.e._, hippopotamus) ivory teeth, and they were so much better fitted
that the distortion of the mouth ceased to be noticeable.

Washington's final illness began December 12, 1799, in a severe cold taken
by riding about his plantation while "rain, hail and snow" were "falling
alternately, with a cold wind." When he came in late in the afternoon,
Lear "observed to him that I was afraid that he had got wet, he said no
his great coat had kept him dry; but his neck appeared to be wet and the