have taken up the matter, and increased the irritations by
sarcasms on the administration and by making a burlesque of the
facts." Then Merry refused an invitation to dine again at the
President's, saying that he awaited instructions from his
Government; and the Marquis Yrujo, who had reasons of his own for
fomenting trouble, struck an alliance with the Merrys and also
declined the President's invitation. Jefferson was incensed at
their conduct, but put the blame upon Mrs. Merry, whom he
characterized privately as a "virago who has already disturbed
our harmony extremely."

A brilliant English essayist has observed that a government to
secure obedience must first excite reverence. Some such
perception, coinciding with native taste, had moved George
Washington to assume the trappings of royalty, in order to
surround the new presidential office with impressive dignity.
Posterity has, accordingly, visualized the first President and
Father of his Country as a statuesque figure, posing at formal
levees with a long sword in a scabbard of white polished leather,
and clothed in black velvet knee-breeches, with yellow gloves and
a cocked hat. The third President of the United States harbored
no such illusions and affected no such poses. Governments were
made by rational beings--"by the consent of the governed," he had
written in a memorable document--and rested on no emotional
basis. Thomas Jefferson remained Thomas Jefferson after his
election to the chief magistracy; and so contemporaries saw him
in the President's House, an unimpressive figure clad in "a blue
coat, a thick gray-colored hairy waistcoat, with a red underwaist
lapped over it, green velveteen breeches, with pearl buttons,
yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels." Anyone might