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mitting, I will go, before I leave this place. Two articles are much distressed for: the one is bells, but the more important one is wood. Yet you cannot see wood for trees. No arrangement has been made, but by promises never performed, to supply the newcomers with fuel. Of the promises, Briesler had received his full share. He had procured nine cords of wood: between six and seven of that was kindly burnt up to dry the walls of the house, which ought to have been done by the commissioners, but which, if left to them, would have remained undone to this day. Congress poured in, but shiver, shiver. No wood-cutters nor carters to be had at any rate. We are now indebted to a Pennsylvania waggon to bring us, through the first clerk in the Treasury Office, one cord and a half of wood, which is all we have for this house, where twelve fires are constantly required, and where, we are told, the roads will soon be so bad that it cannot be drawn. Briesler procured two hundred bushels of coal, or we must have suffered. This is the situation of almost every person. The public officers have sent to Philadelphia for wood-cutters and waggons.

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"The vessel which has my clothes and other matter is not arrived. The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room; I have no looking-glasses, but dwarfs, for this house; nor a twentieth part lamps enough to light it. Many things were stolen, many were broken, by the removal; amongst the number, my tea-china is more than half missing. Georgetown affords nothing. My rooms are very pleasant, and warm, whilst the doors of the hall are closed.

"You can scarce believe that here in this wilder ness-city, I should find myself so occupied as it is. My visitors, some of them, come three and four miles. The return of one of them is the work of one day. Most of the ladies reside in Georgetown, or in scattered parts of the city at two and three miles distance. We have all been very well as yet; if we can by any means get wood, we shall not let our fires go out, but it is at a price indeed; from four dollars it has risen. to nine. Some say it will fall, but there must be more industry than is to be found here to bring half enough. to the market for the consumption of the inhabitants."

The Hon. John Cotton Smith, a member of Con-> gress, from Connecticut, describing Washington as it appeared to him on his arrival there, wrote as follows:

"Our approach to the city was accompanied with sensations not easily described. One wing of the Capitol only had been erected, which, with the President's House, a mile distant from it, both constructed with white sandstone, were striking objects in dismal contrast with the scene around them. Instead of recognizing the avenues and streets portrayed on the plan of the city, not one was visible unless we except a road, with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania, leading as laid down on paper, from the Capitol to the Presi dential mansion, was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with alder bushes, which were cut through the width of the intended Avenue the then ensuing winter. The roads in every di

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rection were muddy and unimproved; a side-walk was attempted in one instance by a covering formed of the chips of the stones which had been hewed for the Capitol. It extended but a little way, and was of little value, for in dry weather the sharp fragments cut our shoes, and in wet weather covered them with white mortar; in short, it was a new settlement. The houses, with two or three exceptions, had been very recently erected, and the operation greatly hurried in view of the approaching transfer of the national government. A laughable desire was manifested by what few citizens and residents there were, to render our condition as pleasant as circumstances would permit. Notwithstanding the unfavorable aspect which Washington presented on our arrival, I cannot sufficiently express my admiration of its local position. From the Capitol you have a distinct view of its fine, undulating surface, situated at the confluence of the Potomac and its Eastern Branch, the wide expanse of that majestic river to the bend at Mount Vernon, the cities of Alexandria and Georgetown, and the cultivated fields and blue hills of Maryland and Virginia on either side of the river, the whole constituting a prospect of surpassing beauty and grandeur. The city has also the inestimable advantage of delightful water, in many instances flowing from copious springs, and always attainable by digging to a moderate depth."

"Some portions of the city are forty miles from Baltimore. The situation is indeed beautiful and pleasant.

"The President's house was built to be looked at by

visitors and strangers, and will render its occupants an object of ridicule with some and of pity with others. It must be cold and damp in winter, and cannot be kept in tolerable order without a regiment of servants. There are but few houses at any one place, and most of them small, miserable huts, which present an awful contrast to the public buildings. The people are poor, and as far as I can judge, they live like fishes, by eating

each other."

The first New-Year's reception at the White House was held by President Adams in 1801. The house was only partially furnished, and Mrs. Adams used the oval room up stairs, now the library, as a drawingroom. The formal etiquette established by Mrs. Washington at New York and Philadelphia was kept up in the wilderness-city by Mrs. Adams.

At this time the health of Mrs. Adams, which had never been very firm, began decidedly to fail. Her residence at Philadelphia had not been favorable, as it had subjected her to the attack of an intermittent fever, from the effects of which she was never afterwards perfectly free. The desire to enjoy the bracing air of her native climate, as well as to keep together the private property of her husband, upon which she early foresaw that he would be obliged to rely for their support in their last years, prompted her to reside much of her time at Quincy.

Thus closed Mrs. Adams' life in Washington, which she has given in the preceding letters; and spring found her once more in her Massachusetts home, recuperating her failing health. She lived in Washington only

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four months and yet she is inseparably connected with it. She was mistress of the White House less than half a year, but she stamped it with her individuality, and none have lived there since who have not looked upon her as the model and guide. It is not asserting too much, to observe that the first occupant of that historic house stands without a rival, and receives a mead of praise awarded to no other American

woman.

In the midst of public or private troubles, the buoyant spirit of Mrs. Adams never forsook her. "I am a mortal enemy," she wrote upon one occasion to her husband," to anything but a cheerful countenance and a merry heart, which Solomon tells us does good like a medicine." "This spirit contributed greatly to lift up his heart, when surrounded by difficulties and dangers, exposed to open' hostility, and secret detraction, and resisting a torrent of invective, such as it may well be doubted whether any other individual in public station in the United States has ever tried to stem. It was this spirit which soothed his wounded feelings when the country, which he had served in the full consciousness of the perfect honesty of his motives, threw him off, and signified its preference for other statesmen. There are oftener, even in this life, more compensations for the severest of the troubles that afflict mankind, than we are apt to think."

The sacrifices made by Mrs. Adams during the long era of war, pestilence, and famine, deserves and should receive from a nation's gratitude a monument as high and massive as her illustrious husband's.

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