forget the
sight as he stood outlined against the glow of the western sky.

Of Oak Hill Cemetery I have spoken again and again. It is almost like a
refrain. It seems to be the natural resting place for Georgetonians when
their work is done.

Its terraces leading steeply down the hill to Rock Creek are shaded by
many stately oak trees and numerous gorgeous copper beeches, and are
adorned in the spring by flowering shrubs.

There is the little ivy-covered chapel which can be seen from the
street, and farther back is the little white Greek temple where Oak
Hill's donor, Mr. Corcoran, rests. Also the larger circular mausoleum
where Marcia Burns Van Ness is interred.

Many besides Georgetonians have been laid to rest within its borders,
for there are Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War for President Lincoln;
James G. Blaine, and many more, all prominent in their days. There, too,
lies Peggy O'Neale, who, as the wife of Andrew Jackson's Secretary of
War, Eaton, kept the social life of the Capital in an uproar for many a
year and, it is said, also greatly influenced political matters.

Her very first triumph took place in Georgetown, when, at a school
exhibition at the Union Hotel, the little girl with dark brown curly
hair and pert red lips was crowned the "Queen of Beauty" by Mrs. Dolly
Madison. Peggy was the daughter of the Irish landlord of a hotel on
Pennsylvania Avenue, and was married at sixteen to Mr. Timberlake, an
officer in the United States Navy. He committed suicide in 1828.

After that began her career, when she was defended and supported in all
that she did by Andrew Jackson, who had suffered bitterly from criticism
of his own wife.

But the most famous person who lies buried in Oak Hill is the man whose
song is known in every hamlet of this broad land: John Howard Payne, the
author of "Home, Sweet Home." He had been in Georgetown in his youth,
you remember, for he accompanied General Lingan on that trip to
Baltimore from which the General never returned but to his funeral. Mr.
Payne was then a young man of twenty-one and excited over the adventure,
I suppose, like any one of that age. He was sent in later life as a
consul to one of those little states on the northern coast of Africa
which in those days made so much trouble for the United States. There he
died and was buried. Years later his body was brought back by Mr.
Corcoran, and there was quite a ceremony for his re-interment.

The stone placed over