If another lady happened to be sitting there when Abigail Adams arrived, he got the interloper to move with a tact that made Mrs. Adams comment, “This same President has so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet carrying his point, that, if he was not really one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might be a very dangerous one.” She continued in a manner that would have irritated her husband: “He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good.”
