A Virginian of good birth—whose fortunes had fallen on evil days, and who was wont to seek solace in the flowing bowl and nepenthic drug—having been installed as custodian of the place, greatly assisted popular superstition by the recital of his own pipe-dream imaginations. As one of the present Tayloes remarked—“you had only to fee the caretaker, and get a ghost-story spun to your liking.” [Illustration: HALL AND STAIRWAY, SCENE OF THE REPUTED SUICIDE] Indeed, what with a mythical Miss Tayloe flinging herself over the third story balustrade to escape the pangs of misplaced affection, and a British officer—“nameless here forevermore”—walling up an octoroon slave girl in the wine cellar; with bells ringing at all hours of the night through the empty rooms, and heart-rending sighs breathing from hidden nooks and passages, the Octagon is particularly rich in spooky traditions, which neither the incredulous smile of daylight, nor the disapproving frown of the family can wholly dispel. So often have they been repeated, and so closely interwoven with the history of the old house—whole works of fiction having been built on them—that when one goes from the warm sunlight across this colonial threshold, pushing back the heavy curved door with its iron bar and ponderous key, the sensation in one’s spinal region is distinctly creepy. The eye wanders apprehensively up the thin, winding stairway to the third floor and back to the spot in the hall directly beneath, where the fatal plunge was made; and descending the narrow, worn stairs to the basement, one involuntarily listens in expectant dread for the smothered groan or sigh from behind those mouldy bricks. Mr. Glenn Brown, the accommodating secretary of the American Institute of Architects, which now owns and occupies the Octagon, tells of a more objectionable class of tenantry than the ghosts, when the architects first took charge of the building in 1899. The faithless caretaker had rented out the rooms to irresponsible negroes, and the architects found several families of them domiciled in the erstwhile abode of Presidents. To remove the squalor and damage consequent upon such occupancy, and to restore and preserve the colonial architecture of the once splendid mansion, the Institute expended three thousand dollars, resulting in handsome and artistic headquarters, in all respects worthy of such an organization. It may not be generally known that prior to 1850, the profession of architecture was not in good repute in America; that carpenters and contractors were much more highly esteemed than architects, the former, in contrast to the latter, being classified as “practical persons.”