Mrs. Madison was warned by her husband to use a disguise, and leaving her carriage and companions, procure another conveyance and fly farther. Attended by a nephew of Judge Duvall, she set out accompanied by one soldier, and at the dawn of day left the inhospitable inn where the most unhappy night of her life had been passed. Her carriage and four horses were left with her friends, and a substitute obtained from a gentleman of Georgetown. Soon tidings reached her that Washington was evacuated, and retracing her steps, she reached, after a weary ride, the Long Bridge, which had been burned at both ends. Here the officer in charge positively refused to let an unknown woman cross in a carriage in his only remaining boat. No alternative was left her but to send for him and explain who she was, when she was driven in her carriage upon the dangerous little raft, which bore her nearer home. Reaching Washington, so disguised that no one knew her, in a strange carriage, she found her former home in ruins, and the noblest buildings reduced to blackened heaps of smoking timber. Desolation met her on every side, and the deserted streets were as quiet as the depths of the forest through which she had passed. Fortunately her sister, Mrs. Cutts, lived in the city, and she repaired there to await Mr. Madison’s return. “The memory of the burning of Washington,” says another, “cannot be obliterated. The subject is inseparable from the great international principles and usages. It never can be thought of by an American, and ought not to be thought of by an enlightened Englishman, but in conjunction with the deplorable and reprehensible scenes it recalls. It was no trophy of war for a great nation. History cannot so record it. Our infant metropolis at that time had the aspect of merely a straggling village, but for the size and beauty of its public buildings. Its scattered population scarcely numbered eight thousand; it had no fortresses or sign of any; not a cannon was mounted.” Late in the morning, news reached the President at his hiding-place in the hovel, that the enemy were retreating to their shipping—and he, too, turned his steps toward the capital, and found his wife before him. He rented the house called the Octagon, owned by Colonel Tayloe, where his family passed the winter, and where he signed the treaty of peace. It was situated on the northeast corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth street. He afterward removed to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth street, where he resided until the President’s House was repaired. This house had been previously occupied by the Treasury Department. On F street, in a house between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, now numbered 246, Mr. and Mrs. Madison lived when he was Secretary of State. All three of these residences still remain.