After Mrs. Lawrason put her Alexandria home at the disposal of General La Fayette, Antoine Charles Cazenove was invited to act as host. When the Alexandrians crowded outside the Lawrason house demanding a sight of and a speech from La Fayette, Cazenove introduced him. La Fayette was "_chez lui_"; the whole visit passed off with great _eclat_. The great General on departure referred to his entertainment in Alexandria as "the most pleasing hours of his life." A gratified city council presented Mrs. Lawrason with a silver cup in recognition of her generous and hospitable act. This, duly inscribed, is cherished to this day by her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Donald M. Hamilton of Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. [Illustration] [Illustration] Chapter 26 Enter the Quaker Pedagogue: Benjamin Hallowell Benjamin Hallowell came to Alexandria in 1824 to open a school for boys. He was then twenty-five, with no fortune, a large debt, a dependent mother, a new and young bride. For his first school he rented the building on the northeast corner of Oronoco and Washington Streets, next to the house where the widow of General Harry Lee resided! Alexandria was in a turmoil of hospitality, welcoming the Marquis de la Fayette. Hallowell and his wife of a few hours stood in their front door the morning after their marriage and saw the famous Frenchman paying his _devoirs_ to Mrs. Lee. Hallowell's autobiography pictures the occasion: "When he got opposite," he wrote, "he looked at us, took off his hat, and made a graceful bow, not knowing it was to a lady who had been married the day before." Nor that his liking for a fresh smiling face inspired the schoolmaster to immediately express his emotions in the following verse: Each lover of Liberty surely must get Something in honor of LaFayette There's a LaFayette watch-chain, a LaFayette hat, A LaFayette this, and a LaFayette that. But I wanted something as lasting as life As I took to myself a LaFayette wife.[187] The school of Benjamin Hallowell filled slowly at first. The ninth boy to enroll was Mrs. Harry Lee's son, Robert Edward. Edmund Lee and Thomas Swann sent their boys, who were "ten dollar" scholars. The time was to come when Hallowell would turn away more than a hundred applicants, but that was after Robert Edward Lee had gone to West Point and distinguished himself.