interrogatories to me, relative to the distance to the city, and similar grave matters. It was dark when we arrived. I had ordered the coachman to set me down at Brown's--but I was informed that there was not a vacant room in the house, and also that every other hotel in the city was full. This overflow of company as I afterwards ascertained was caused by the assemblage at Washington of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Convention, adding some hundreds to the ordinary visiters of the period. To add to the discomfort of wanting lodgings, it was raining with great violence, and I dreaded a drive through the interminable streets of the federal metropolis. Our lady companion had observed that she was to be dropped at the residence of some relative, and moreover stated that it was a boarding house. But she avoided proposing that we should quarter with her; and not until I had seen her safely within the house, and was returning to the stage, did she mention our plight to her relative. The latter was immediately urgent that we should remain at her house, declaring that she had several unoccupied rooms, which were entirely at our disposal. This new position of affairs was highly gratifying, and we anticipated all the comforts of a good supper, and comfortable lodgings, with a satisfaction which can best be conceived by those to whom those commodities have, at times, been wanting. My wife was safely seated in the well warmed dining room, the baggage deposited in the hall,--and I took the opportunity afforded by a delay in the appearance of supper, to step across the street, and inform the gentlemen with whom I was engaged, of my arrival, which was a day or two later than they had anticipated. On my return to the boarding house, to my utter astonishment, I saw my wife standing at the street door, in her bonnet and cloak, while my trunks were piled upon the steps. Hey dey, said I, what does all this mean--why are you not warming yourself at the fire, instead of standing here muffled up, as if your journey was now to commence instead of being ended? We cannot remain, said she, in a tone of chagrin. Cannot! What is the reason? Are the people mad here, as well as on the road? It would seem so. I had scarcely been five minutes in the house, when the landlady, who was at first so eager that we should lodge with her, changed her mind, and informed me that she could not accommodate us. But she will not turn us out supperless, I hope, such a night as this? I am not so certain of that. She appears to be infected with the same disease under which all our travelling companions have labored. People seem actually to avoid us as though we carried the plague about in our garments. She bowed me out of the dining room with as little ceremony as she would have shewn to a mendicant.