In November, 1847, Lincoln started for Washington. The city in 1848 was little more than the outline of the Washington of 1896. The Capitol was without the present wings, dome, or western terrace. The White House, the City Hall, the Treasury, the Patent Office, and the Post-Office were the only public buildings standing then which have not been rebuilt or materially changed. The streets were unpaved, and their dust in summer and mud in winter are celebrated in every record of the period. The parks and circles were still unplanted. Near the White House were a few fine old homes, and Capitol Hill was partly built over. Although there were deplorable wastes between these two points, the majority of the people lived in this part of the city, on or near Pennsylvania Avenue. The winter that Lincoln was in Washington, Daniel Webster lived on Louisiana Avenue, near Sixth Street; Speaker Winthrop and Thomas H. Benton on C Street, near Third; John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan, the latter then Secretary of State, on F Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. Many of the senators and congressmen were in hotels, the leading ones of which were Willard's, Coleman's, Gadsby's, Brown's, Young's, Fuller's, and the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, who was in Washington for his first term as senator, lived at Willard's. So inadequate were the hotel accommodations during the sessions that visitors to the town were frequently obliged to accept most uncomfortable makeshifts for beds. Seward, visiting the city in 1847, tells of sleeping on "a cot between two beds occupied by strangers." The larger number of members lived in "messes," a species of boarding-club, over which the owner of the house occupied usually presided. The "National Intelligencer" of the day is sprinkled with announcements of persons "prepared to accommodate a mess of members." Lincoln went to live in one of the best known of these clubs, Mrs. Sprigg's, in "Duff Green's Row," on Capitol Hill. This famous row has now entirely disappeared, the ground on which it stood being occupied by the new Congressional Library. [Illustration: ROBERT SMITH, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN CONGRESS. Born in New Hampshire in 1802; removed to Illinois in 1832. A member of the legislature from 1836 to 1840, and of Congress from 1843 to 1849. During the war, paymaster in the United States Army at St. Louis. Died at Alton in 1868.] At Mrs. Sprigg's, Lincoln had as mess-mates several Congressmen: A.R. McIlvaine, James Pollock, John Strohm, and John Blanchard, all of Pennsylvania, Patrick Tompkins of Mississippi, Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, and Elisha Embree of Indiana. Among his neighbors in messes on Capitol Hill were Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Only one of the members of the mess at Mrs. Sprigg's in the winter of 1847-1848 is now living, Dr. S.C. Busey of Washington, D.C. He sat nearly opposite Lincoln at the table.