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A green silk sash across his breast, a gold-laced belt, supporting a light dress-sword and a pair of pistols, buckled around the jaunty waist of his ordinary black frock-coat, were his scant martial suggestions.
"Your highness!" exclaimed the count coming forward with long strides, and touching the hilt of the dress-sword hanging at his side "your highness, I have come to justify myself against the calumnies of my enemies. Will you be pleased to hear me patiently, and not impugn my honor as a gentleman and a count of the empire before you have listened to my justification?" "You would justify yourself!
"He was always dressed in a suit of black, his hair powdered and tied in a black queue behind, with a very elegant dress-sword, which he wore with inimitable grace. Mrs. Washington often, but not always, dined with the company, sat at the head of the table, and if, as was occasionally the case, there were other ladies present, they sat each side of her.
The white silk flowered waistcoat, the bunch of gold seals below it, the claret-tinted velvet coat and breeches, the black silk clocked hose with gold buckles at ankle and knee, and a silver-hilted dress-sword in a green shagreen sheath, complete my picture.
After a few moments Washington rose again and came forward, and stood between two of the supporting pillars of the gallery, in full view of the people. His noble and commanding form was clad in a suit of fine, dark-brown cloth, manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut. At his side was a steel-hilted dress-sword.
"Washington was dressed precisely as Stuart has painted him in Lord Lansdowne's full-length portrait in a full suit of the richest black velvet, with diamond knee-buckles, and square silver buckles set upon shoes japanned with the most scrupulous neatness, black silk stockings, his shirt ruffled at the breast and wrists, a light dress-sword, his hair profusely powdered, fully dressed, so as to project at the sides, and gathered behind in a silk bag, ornamented with a large rose of black ribbon.
The soft light from the wax candles in their sconces in the hall fell upon his thickly powdered wig, ran in little ripples up and down the length of his polished dress-sword, and sparkled in the brilliants in the buckles of his shoes.
There was a young naval officer in full dress, gold-buckled shoes, white trousers, short jacket with gold swab on shoulders, dress-sword and smart gait making for supper at King's House. A long-legged "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig, canopied in leather and curtained clumsily.
At a former dinner I remember seeing a gentleman in small-clothes, with a dress-sword; but all formalities of the kind are passing away. The Mayor's dinners, too, will no doubt be extinct before many years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry in a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. The Bishop is nearly seven feet high.
He was in full uniform, and had buckled on his dress-sword, which he seldom wore having, on this morning declared, it is said, that if he were compelled to surrender he would do so in full harness. Of his calmness at this trying moment the writer is able to bear his personal testimony.
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