The city of Washington disappears and its site spreads before us in flourishing farm lands and orchards. Scattered farm-houses raise their chimneys amid primeval oaks and elms, and from the low doorway of the humblest emerges the winsome form of Marcia Burns. Six hundred acres, representing the thrift of generations of Scotch ancestors, surround her. The Potomac, one of the great water-ways of the South, carrying the produce of the fertile lands above into Alexandria for consumption or reshipment, almost kisses her feet. This is her patrimony, over which she has already heard such spirited debate between her father and General Washington, then President of the United States, and the three gentlemen commissioned by Congress, at that time sitting in Philadelphia, to select and purchase the ground on which is to be built the capital city. As she looks riverward a canoe is beached in the shadow of the vine-hung trees, and the President, accompanied by two of the commissioners, whose forms have of late grown familiar to her childish eyes, have come again to confer with her father, whom Washington has already dubbed "the obstinate Mr. Burns." "And I suppose you think," says Burns, as the dispute again waxes warm, "that people here are going to take every grist that comes from you as pure grain. But what would you have been if you had not married the widow Custis?" Gracefully or ungracefully, however, he must eventually yield, for the "Widow's Mite," as Burns's acres were described in the land patent of 1681 which bestowed them upon his emigrant ancestor, form part of the tract which Maryland has ceded to the nation for its capital. Here is stalwart Johnson, governor of the State, to emphasize the fact with many a round oath that makes the gentle Marcia's heart stand still. "And yonder lassie," says Daniel Carroll, "will be the greatest heiress hereabouts." Davy Burns' eyes wander towards his daughter. He is long silent. The shadows have lengthened into darkness when he says, "Very well, sirs, take the land, and I leave it to your fairness to fix the terms." [Illustration: Marcia Burns (Mrs. John Peter Van Ness) From miniature by James Peale, 1797] Supper is served, and the guests are accommodated for the night beneath the moss-grown roof of the attic, for Burns' cottage boasts but four rooms,--two sleeping-rooms, a sitting-room, and a dining-room, the kitchen being built apart from the house, as was the custom of the time and country. Unpretentious as the little abode is, the deed conveying the property to the commissioners, in trust for the government, provides that the streets of the new city shall be so laid out as not to interfere with it. * * * * *