t intrigues me most is Gay. There were two of them for
a while, the one that is now N, and another, way up near the college,
which was renamed in honor of General Lingan, after his tragic death.
Who was Gay Street named for? It wasn't a local celebrity, for Baltimore
also had a Gay Street, still has, way down in its old section. There was
somebody the people of that generation admired and wished to
commemorate.

Could it possibly have been the English poet, John Gay, (1685-1732)
whose best known piece "The Beggar's Opera" was said to have made "The
Rich gay and Gay rich"? He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph
was by Alexander Pope, followed by Gay's own mocking couplet, "Life is a
jest, and all things show it. I thought so once and now I know it."

The Beggar's Opera for a time drove Italian Opera off the English stage
(1728) by its caricature of Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of George
II. These people were British subjects, you know, when these streets
were named.

Somewhere in these quaint little streets in the early days before 1800,
in one of these little brick houses, two stories with dormer windows,
which the architects nowadays call the George Town Type, lived a couple
named McDonald who had marital difficulties, for in an old newspaper is
this advertisement:

Whereas my wife, Mary McDonald, has left me without any just cause
or impediment. She is about fifty years of age, lame in her right
leg and snivels a little. It is supposed she went off with one
Robert Joiner, an ill-looking fellow. If she returns to the arms of
her disconsolate husband, she shall be received and no questions
asked.

There was another advertisement:

Alexander McDonald, taylor, removed from Bridge Street to High
Street, two or three gentlemen can be accomodated with board and
lodging.

I wonder if Robert Joiner, with whom Mary eloped, was one of those two
or three gentlemen, and what fascination she had that was strong enough
to overcome all those physical disabilities her "disconsolate husband"
enumerated!

A man in Boston wanted a wife, and had his advertisement copied from
_The Boston Sentinel_ into a George Town newspaper:

Wanted--A wife: Enquire of the Printer. April 23, 1801. Be pleased
to inform applicants, that the advertiser wishes the lady to be
neither too old nor too young. Taking 25 for a central point, she
must not be more than 7 years distant eit