In the meantime guests were arriving rapidly, horseback or in handsome,
high-panelled coaches drawn by four horses (such as Colonel Cary of
Ampthill boasted), and the negro grooms were busy stabling them. In the
house servants were moving about, lighting the fragrant wax candles of
myrtle-berry and seeing to the comfort of the guests. The narrow
stairway could hardly accommodate the rustling, voluminous brocades that
swept up and down them above the clicking, high-heeled shoes and dainty,
silver-clocked stockings. But there was room for all in the beautiful
octagonal hall, thirty feet square, and in the long saloon parlor, the
cost of whose inlaid satin and rosewood floor had somewhat scandalized
Mr. Jefferson's less wealthy and less artistic neighbors.
It were hard indeed to get together a gathering of more beautiful women
or more courtly, distinguished gentlemen than was assembled that evening
at Monticello. Among the latter were many of those men who had helped to
make America what she was; lawgivers, soldiers, tried statesmen who had
been of that famous Congress of '75, of which my Lord Chatham, in a
burst of uncontrollable enthusiasm, had declared that "its members had
never been excelled in solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and
wisdom of conclusion.
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