"On looking over my accounts, I found I had paid out over five thousand dollars since I first went to Congress, for rent alone, and all this is a dead loss; so, finding an old staff-officer (Major D. G. Swaim), I negotiated enough to enable me to get a lot on the corner of Thirteenth and I Streets, north, opposite to Franklin Square, and I have got a house three-quarters done. It may be a losing business, but I hope I shall be able to sell it when I am done with it, so as to save myself the rent." This house, where Garfield and his family spent so many happy hours during their winter sojourns in Washington, is a plain brick mansion with a wing built out on the east side to accommodate his fine library. The parlor windows look out upon Franklin Square and the corner of I and Thirteenth Streets. To a visitor ushered into this pleasant, cheery drawing-room, the first object that greeted the eye was an excellent portrait of "Grandma Garfield," which hung over the grand piano. On the opposite side was a beautiful painting of "Little Trot," the baby-girl whose loss the loving father never ceased to deplore. The room was tastefully but simply furnished, and in the small sitting-room, leading out of the parlor, the pretty desk piled up with books and papers, seemed the most important piece of furniture. The dining-room with its Japanese dado, and its chairs and table of Austrian bent wood was a particularly pleasant room. Just above the mantel hung a half-finished sketch of an old-time knight balancing in one hand an empty glass, and leaning the other upon an inn table. An artist friend began the painting with the intention of carrying out an ideal that Garfield had once expressed at a Shakespearian gathering. Dying before the picture was finished, the painter left only an outline of the idea, but that outline, Garfield valued very highly. His love for pictures was almost as great as his love for books, and the walls of this plain little house in Thirteenth Street were adorned with many choice paintings and engravings. Just over the dining-room was the library where Garfield spent the greater part of his time, when free from congressional duties. In the centre stood a large black walnut office-desk with its accompaniments of pigeon-holes, boxes and drawers, filled to overflowing. Six or seven book-cases, holding in all some three thousand volumes, stood against the walls; and scrap-books of all shapes and sizes confronted you everywhere.