h the son of a
minister who taught Latin in the school.

When the pupils came that morning, they sensed the excitement and
gathered in groups in the gallery. Eventually, the news leaked out and
the chief topic was that the young lady took no baggage, not even a
nightgown, in her flight.

Just below here, on Congress (31st) Street, in the latter part of the
last century lived a lady much beloved by rich and poor. She was the
first person to conceive the idea of a diet kitchen for the needy. She
had not much of this world's goods, so she went daily to the different
butchers who gave her scraps of meat which she cooked, and had
continually on hand jars of "beef tea." All the doctors knew where to
apply when they had patients who were in need of it. She was the widow
of Captain Charles Carroll Simms, an officer of the old navy who went
with the Confederacy, and at the famous battle in Hampton Roads, was
second in command of the _Merrimac_, and in command after the chief
officer was killed. She was Elizabeth Nourse, daughter of Major Charles
Joseph Nourse, of The Highlands.

Next door, below Mrs. Simms' house, stands the Methodist Protestant
Church which not long ago celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The
lot for it was purchased in April, 1829, but the founders for a year or
two previous to that had been worshipping in the Presbyterian Church
building, Saint John's or the Lancastrian schoolroom. It is now a
Christian Science Church.

Across the street from the church, next door to the Post Office, the
tall brick house is where a family lived which in the nineties was a
mystery to Georgetown--the Oueston family--father, mother, and daughter.
No one knew what was the father's business, and no one ever saw the
mother out, but it was rumored that she came from South America, was of
royal blood, and had a throne on which she sat, dressed accordingly. The
daughter was known then, and for many years afterwards, as "the girl of
a thousand curls." She was tall and slender, and her magnificent suit of
dark hair was a mass of curls, making her head look like "a bushel
basket." She wore ankle-length dresses of a style totally different from
what every other girl wore: white stockings, when all of us wore black,
and black slippers, laced up with narrow black ribbons.

And then up to the northeast corner of Gay (N) and Congress (31st)
Streets, to the tall yellow house, now an apartment house. For many
years it was at the hom