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tether, replied: "Any that your excellency may choose to name."

The Burns deed was the first recorded in the new city, and it was provided therein that the streets should be so laid off as not to interfere with the cottage—a provision that was religiously regarded by the commissioners when they came to survey the streets and lots. It was further provided that when the property should be laid off into town lets, every alternate lot should be and remain the absolute property in fee of the original owner. This provision speedily made David Burns a rich man—as rich men were counted in those days. But his improved fortunes made no change in his worldly surroundings, though with a fatherly forethought that did honor to his heart he took immediate steps to prepare and educate his only daughter, Marcia Burns, in fit manner for the station he believed she was destined to oссuру.

She was at this time some twelve or thirteen years of age, and was at once placed at school in Baltimore, and a home was provided for the young heiress and future belle in the elegant and refined household of Luther Martin, Esq., the celebrated Maryland lawyer of that day. After several years' sojourn here, she returned to her father's humble cottage, at the age of eighteen or twenty, and not very far from the time when the government was removed from Philadelphia to the embryo Capital prepared for it in the wilderness. She is described as being at this time "lovely in person, and gracious and winning in manners," and to the end of a life that was altogether lovely there was never a moment when these attributes were not justly hers.

With such attractions of mind, person and fortune, it is small wonder that the humble cottage by the river side speedily became the resort of brave company, representative alike of the resident "First Families" and of the sojourning element drawn to the new capital by the exigencies of public life. It is recorded that during the first years of the new city, many eminent persons were guests beneath the Scotchman's lowly roof. It is said that the poet Thomas Moore, during his visit to this country, was received here, and spent a night in the little spare bedchamber of the ground floor. The Carrols of "Duddington Manor," the bluest of Maryland's blue blood, drove their stately carriage across the marshy waste lying behind the unfinished "President's House," to claim the acquaintance of "the beautiful Washington heiress." The Laws, with their prestige from half a million dollars of East Indian gold, and their alliance by marriage with the great Washington himself, did not disdain such friendship as the "Crusty Davie" would accord them.

But it was to the young and bachelor members of Congress, for removed from the society and influences of home, adrift as it were in the dreary boarding-house life of the raw embryo city, that the society of the beautiful Marcia Burns must have seemed a very lodestar of attraction. Among the many suitors for her hand, the favored one was John P. Van Ness, a representative in Congress from New York state, and a son of one of its oldest and most influential Dutch families. He was at this time about thirty years of age, and has been tersely described by an early writer as "well-fed, well-bred, and well-read." He was educated at Columbia College, and had afterward studied for the law, but on account of ill-health had given up the practice. He was possessed of fair abilities, an ample fortune, a handsome and pleasing address, and claimed for his political friend no less a personage than Aaron Burr, then the Vice-President of the United States, and in the very zenith of his power and influence.

To this gallant suitor, the fair heiress gave her heart, but before she bestowed her hand, crusty David died, and she was left the sole possessor of the wealth which fortune had thrust upon the humble household. The only other heir, a brother, had died some years before, while still only a child. The mother also had been dead some years. On the 9th of May, 1802, her twentieth birthday, she bestowed her hand and fortune where her heart had already been given. At the end of his term, her husband gave up his residence in New York, and became fully identified with the community which in after years bestowed upon him its highest