prietor was Caleb Willard.
Brown's Hotel, farther down town, on Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth
Street, was a popular rendezvous for Congressional people. It was first
called the Indian Queen, and was kept by that prince of hosts, Jesse
Brown. After his death the name was changed to the Metropolitan.

The National Hotel on the opposite corner was the largest hostelry in
Washington. It boasted of a large Southern _clientele_, and until
President Buchanan's administration enjoyed a very prosperous career.
Subsequent to Buchanan's inauguration, however, a mysterious epidemic
appeared among the guests of the house which the physicians of the
District failed to satisfactorily diagnose. It became commonly known as
the "National Hotel disease," and resulted in numerous deaths. A notice
occasionally appeared in the current newspapers stating that the
deceased had died from this malady. Mrs. Robert Greenhow, in her book
published in London during the Civil War, entitled "My Imprisonment and
the First Years of Abolition Rule at Washington," attributes the
epidemic to the machinations of the Republicans, who were desirous of
disposing of President Buchanan. John Gadsby was its proprietor at one
time, from whom it usually went by the name of "Gadsby's." President
Buchanan was one of its guests on the eve of his inauguration.

When I first knew Washington, slavery was in full sway and, with but few
exceptions, all servants were colored. The wages of a good cook were
only six or seven dollars a month, but their proficiency in the culinary
art was remarkable. I remember once hearing Count Adam Gurowski, who had
traversed the European continent, remark that he had never anywhere
tasted such cooking as in the South. The grace of manner of many of the
elderly male slaves of that day would, indeed, have adorned a court.
When William L. Marcy, who, although a master in statesmanship and
diplomacy, was not especially gifted in external graces, was taking
final leave of the clerks in the War Department, where as Secretary he
had rendered such distinguished services under President Polk, he shook
hands with an elderly colored employee named Datcher, who had formerly
been a body servant to President Monroe, and said: "Good-bye, Datcher;
if I had had your manners I should have left more friends behind me."
Some years later, and after my marriage into the Gouverneur family, I
had the good fortune to have passed down to me a venerable colored man