When my husband’s parents were members of the Congressional circle in Washington—1829–’35—the journey to the capital from their home in northern Alabama was no light undertaking. In those early days Congressman (afterward Governor, and United States Senator) and Mrs. C. C. Clay, Sr., travelled by coach to the Federal City, accompanied by their coloured coachman, Toney (who, because of his expert driving, soon became notable in Washington), and a maid-servant, Milly, who were necessary to their comfort and station. Many days were consumed in these journeys, that lay through Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia, during which the travellers were exposed to all the dangers common to a young and often unsettled forest country. The tangled woods of the South land, odorous with the cedar or blossoming with dogwood, mimosa or magnolias, were often Arcadias of beauty. The land of the sky, now the object of pilgrimages for the wealthy and become the site of palaces built by kings of commerce, was then still more beautiful with primeval freshness. Far as the eye could see, as hills were scaled and valleys crossed, were verdured slopes and wooded mountain crests. The Palisades of the Tennessee, as yet scarcely penetrated by Northern tourists, were then the wonder as they still are the pride of the traveller from the South. In 1853, my husband was elected a United States Senator, to take the seat of a former college friend, Jere Clemens, whose term had just expired, and succeeding his father C. C. Clay, Sr., after eleven years. In December of the same year, we began our trip to the capital under comparatively modern conditions. My several visits to Vermont and New Jersey Hydropathic Cures, then the fashionable sanitariums, had already inured me to long journeys. By this time steam railways had been established, and, though not so systematically connected as to make possible the taking of long trips over great distances without devious and tiresome changes, they had lessened the time spent upon the road between Alabama and Washington very appreciably; but, while in comparison with those in common use to-day, the cars were primitive, nevertheless they were marvels of comfort and speed to the travellers of the fifties. Sleeping cars were not yet invented, but the double-action seatbacks of the regular coaches, not then, as now, screwed down inexorably, made it a simple matter to convert two seats into a kind of couch, on which, with the aid of a pillow, one managed very well to secure a half repose as the cars moved soberly along.