Across Congress (31st) Street, at number 3108 West (P) Street, the house with the high steps going up sideways was built by Judge Morsell about 1800. For a while, the Barnards lived there. Then the Marquis de Podestad, Minister from Spain to this country, made it his residence. After the Civil War, General George C. Thomas resided there. Next door is where the Shoemakers have lived for many years. The house with the nice, old hipped roof was at one time owned by a Captain Brown. In the eighties and nineties the Misses Dorsey of Virginia had here a school for girls called "Olney Institute." Afterwards, Reverend Parke P. Flournoy, once a chaplain in the Confederate Army, lived here up into his nineties with his family. Still a little farther on, and incorporated with the old Tenney house, now owned by Mrs. Stephen Bonsal, is where Miss Jennie Gardiner had a school for little children about the same time as the Dorseys' school. For some time before the Civil War it was the home of the Reverend Mr. Simpson, whose wife was Miss Stephenson from near Winchester. Her father, whose home was Kenilworth, near there, made her a present of the house. Following the Civil War, it was for a long time the home of William H. Tenney, who had a prosperous flour mill. Just across the street from it, the imposing looking yellow house with the mansard roof is the one that Elinor Glyn bought and "did over," and then never lived in, as she decided to go back to England to her mother, who was in delicate health. Later it was the residence of Mrs. Isabella Greenway, Representative in Congress from Arizona. A block from here just above Q Street on what is now dignified by the name of 32nd, but will always remain to old Georgetonians, Valley Street, lived a very interesting character, still remembered by some people in Georgetown as "The crazy man of Valley Street." Among other shabby houses, one which was quite different in appearance and stood a little back from the street, with a tree in its tiny patch of a yard, was where he lived. It looked as if it had a story--and it had. It was told me not long ago by an old friend. I call him a friend, for whenever I went to the institution where he was a doorkeeper, I went back in memory to the years when he was our postman. In those days your postman was your friend. You thought over what your Christmas gift to him would be as much as a member of your family. Not like it is nowadays, when he drops your letters through a slit in the door. You don't know his name, you don't know what he looks like, you don't even know whether he is white or colored.