the city, and has long merited its high reputation. Few modern hotels have the large, airy rooms and old-fashioned elegance maintained here, and the table is excellent, attracting a high class of patronage. Rates, $3 to $4.

The St. James, at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, on the European plan ($1), has been a stopping-place for business men for forty years or so.

The Shoreham, at I and Fifteenth streets, near McPherson Square, is the newest first-class hotel in the city; has a lofty, handsome fire-proof building, with every convenience for luxurious living, and a central situation. It has numbered among its guests the highest in the land, and has been the scene of many fashionable dinners and receptions. Conducted on both European and American plans; $4 to $5.

The Hotel Varnum is a small, comfortable house on Capitol Hill, at New Jersey Avenue and C Street, S. E. Terms, $2.

The Vendome is an excellent, inexpensive hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue at Third Street, near the Capitol. $2 to $3.

Wellington. Formerly Hotel Page. See p. 10.

Willard's, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, is identified with the history of Washington (p. 66), where, especially just before and during the Civil War, it was the one great house of entertainment. It is of great size, and is still the resort of politicians and office-seekers, especially from the South. Terms, $3.

Certain additional hotels, or regular boarding-houses, which receive short-term boarders at from $40 to $75 a month, but are mainly the homes of families, are as follows:

The Anderson, 340 C Street.

The Aston, Eleventh and G streets.

The Buckingham, 918 Fifteenth Street.
The Clarendon, Fourteenth and I streets.

Congressional Hotel, New Jersey Avenue and B Street, S. E.

The Dunbarton, 623 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Eckington, Third and T streets, N. E., Eckington.

The Everett, 1723 H Street.

The Grammercy, Vermont Avenue, opposite Arlington Hotel. Hillman House, 226 North Capitol Street.

The Irvington, 1416 K Street.

The Lincoln, Tenth and H streets.

The Litchfield, Fourteenth Street, between I and K streets.

The Morrisett, Fourteenth and H streets.

The Rochester, Thirteenth and G streets.

The Windsor, New York Avenue and Fifteenth Street.

Restaurants have multiplied and improved in Washington during the last ten years, which have also witnessed the disappearance of the old-fashioned, village-like custom of eating dinner as soon after 4.00 o'clock as office hours would permit. Now Washingtonians, gentle and simple, lunch at 1.00 and dine at 6.00 to 8.00, like other Christians. The most famous restaurants in Washington, since the disappearance of Wormley's and Welcker's, are Chamberlin's and Harvey's. The former occupies a double house at I and Fifteenth streets and serves game and costly delicacies beloved of clubmen, prepared in the southern style which has made his terrapin, canvas-backs, etc., celebrated. The other, Harvey's, at Pennsylvania Avenue and Eleventh Street, is noted for its oysters. These and the Shoreham, Page's, and the Raleigh are favorite resorts for after-the-theater suppers. The Losekam, 1225 F Street; the Bedford, Thirteenth and F streets, and La Fetra's (p. 10) are patronized largely by ladies, who can also find, on F, G, Ninth, Seventh, and other streets in the region near the public buildings, a large number of dairies, bakeries, ice-cream saloons, and eating-places of every grade, resorted to by government clerks, men and women, high and low. Dining-rooms are numerous on the Avenue and in Georgetown. The restaurants

in the Capitol are good and not expensive, especially Page's in the Senate basement, and there is a good one at the National Museum. No distinctly French or Italian table d'hote has yet been opened in Washington, but several German establishments furnishing meals are known to those fond of German dishes and beer. See also p. 160.

Professional boarding-houses are plentiful, particularly in the region north of the Avenue, between Tenth and Fourteenth streets, and in the neighborhood of the Pension Building; and this quarter also abounds in private houses renting rooms and perhaps furnishing board. All these are indicated by small signs displayed at the door or in a window. The best plan for a person desiring such quarters is to walk about, observe these signs, and examine what suits him. A man and his wife can get very comfortable lodging and board for $75 a month.

Apartment Houses have begun to arise in Washington, of which the most conspicuous is the lofty Cairo, on Q Street, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth. Other fine apartment houses and family

hotels are The Albany (for gentlemen only), H and Seventeenth streets; The Cambridge, 1309 Seventeenth Street; The Clifton, Massachusetts Avenue and Fourteenth Street; The Concord, New Hampshire Avenue, between S and T streets; The Frederick, Ninth and K streets; The Grafton, 1139 Connecticut Avenue; The Portland, Thomas Circle; The Richmond, Seventeenth and H streets, and The Woodmont, Iowa Circle.

The Shops of Washington are extensive and fine, for it is a city which calls for a good appearance and generous living on the part of its citizens. It is a city, moreover, where the strangers who come spend money. The principal shopping streets are Pennsylvania

Avenue, Seventh, Ninth, F and G streets between Ninth and Fourteenth streets, but there are local groups of stores, especially for provisions, on Capitol Hill and in Georgetown.

District and Municipal Affairs.

The District of Columbia had a peculiar origin, and its constitution and history account for many of the peculiarities of the present capital city. The first Congress of the United States had the task of establishing a Federal capital, under a plan for taking in some small tract of land and exercising exclusive jurisdiction over it. In 1790 a bill was passed, after many postponements and much hot discussion, accepting from the States of Maryland and Virginia a tract ten miles square on the Potomac, to be called the District of Columbia; but in 1846 Virginia's portion - some thirty-six square miles south of the river - was ceded back to her. Three Commissioners were appointed by the President (Washington) to purchase the land from its owners, and to provide suitable buildings for the President, Congress, and the public offices of the Government, but they had much difficulty in the first matter, as the inhabitants declined to sell their property at any reasonable price. Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French engineer who had fought in the Revolution, was appointed by the Commissioners to lay out the city within the District, but proved so irreconcilable to discipline that it became necessary to dismiss him, though his plan was essentially followed by Ellicott, his assistant, who succeeded him. It is to L'Enfant, consequently, that we owe the broad, radiating avenues, superimposed upon a plan of rectilinear streets, which cut across the avenues at many angles, and thus form oddly shaped lots that have stimulated the genius of landscape gardeners and architects.

The avenues were named after the States, and in a certain order. By reason of its midway and influential position, that had already given it the excellent soubriquet, Keystone State, Pennsylvania was entitled to the name of the great central avenue. The avenues south of this received the names of the Southern States; the avenues which crossed Pennsylvania were named after the Middle States, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, while the New England States were left to designate the avenues then regarded as remote possibilities among the swamps and hills of the northwest. The curious way in which the capital has developed along the lines of the last-named group is typical of the growth and change in the balance of the whole country since L'Enfant's day.

The rectilinear streets run exactly north and south and east and west. The streets running east and west are known by the letters of the alphabet, so we have North A and South A, North B and South B, and so on; at right angles to the alphabetical streets are the streets bearing numbers, and beginning their house enumeration at a line running due north and south through the Capitol. This divides the city into four quarters, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest, each with its own set of numbers for the houses,¦ arranged upon the decimal system—that is, 100 numbers for each block. This is repeated in a direction away from each of the Capitol streets; all addresses, therefore, should bear the added designation of the quarter by its initials-N. W., N. E., S. E., or S. W. In this book, as nearly everything mentioned is in the Northwest Quarter. these initials are uniformly omitted for that quarter, but are alway supplied elsewhere.

In 1800 the seat of Government was established (p. 19) in Wash ington, which was first so called, it is said, by the Commissioners in 1791. The General himself, who was its most active promoter, always spoke of it as the Federal City. The town was all in the woods, and had only 3,000 inhabitants, mostly living in the northwestern quarter, or on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless it grew until 1814, when, after a weak resistance at Bladensburg, it was captured by the British, who set fire to the public buildings and some private residences, intending to destroy the town altogether. A hurricane of wind and rain came that ight to complete the destruction in some respects, but this extinguished the conflagration. Next day the British left in a pani of causeless fear, excepting a large contingent of deserters, who too this opportunity to stay behind and "grow up with the country.