reason that if it was open to buyers, speculators would build up his beloved avenues (which he intended, in time, should outrival Versailles) with squatter’s huts—just as they afterwards did. Then Duddington House, the abode of Daniel Carroll, was in the way of one of his triumphal avenues, and he ordered it torn down without leave or license, to the rage of its owner and the indignation of the Commissioners. Duddington House was rebuilt by order of the government in another place, and stands to-day a relic of the past amid its old forest trees on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless its first demolition was held as one of the sins of the uncontrollable L’Enfant, who was summarily discharged March 6, 1792. His dismissal was thus announced by Jefferson in a letter to one of the Commissioners: “It having been found impracticable to employ Major L’Enfant about the Federal City in that degree of subordination which was lawful and proper, he has been notified that his services are at an end. It is now proper that he should receive the reward of his past services, and the wish that he should have no just cause of discontent suggests that it should be liberal. The President thinks of $2,500, or $3,000, but leaves the determination to you.” Jefferson wrote in the same letter: “The enemies of the enterprise will take the advantage of the retirement of L’Enfant to trumpet the whole as an abortion.” But L’Enfant lived and died within sight of the dawning city of his love which he had himself created—and never wrought it, or its projectors any harm through all the days of his life. He was loyal to his adopted government, but to his last breath clung to every atom of his personal claim upon it, as pugnaciously as he did to his maps, when commanded to give them up. He lived without honor, and died without fame. Time will vindicate one and perpetuate the other in one of the most magnificent capitals of earth. His living picture lingers still with more than one old inhabitant. One tells of him in an unchangeable “green surtout, walking across the commons and fields, followed by half-a-dozen hunting dogs.” Also, of reporting to him at Port Washington in 1814 to do duty, and of first receiving a glass of wine from the old soldier-architect and engineer before he told him what to do. Mr. Corcoran, the banker, tells how L’Enfant looked in his latter days: “a rather seedy, stylish old man, with a long blue or green coat buttoned up to his throat, and a bell-crowned hat; a little moody and lonely, like one wronged.” [Illustration: COLUMBIA SLAVE PEN. FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS BANK.] [Illustration: SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE.] [Illustration: MAJOR L’ENFANT’S RESTING PLACE.]