Davis returned to New York, collecting a few dollars at Philadelphia, due him from sales of “The Wanderings of William.” In April, 1802, he was at Washington again, where Congress was in session. “I watched an opportunity to make the Vice-President my salutations as he came out of the Capitol. He demonstrated no little pleasure to see me; and his chariot being at the steps, he took me home with him to dine.” The House of Representatives was then sitting in a detached temporary building. Davis thought John Randolph the most eloquent in debate. After a few days in Washington, the itinerant passed on to Prince William County, where he had been engaged as tutor by Mr. Ball at twenty-five pounds the quarter. At Frying Pan, in Prince William County, Davis inquired the way. “How far, my boy,” said I, “is it to Frying Pan?” “You be in the Pan now,” replied the boy. “Frying Pan is composed of four log huts and a meeting-house. It took its name from a curious circumstance. Some Indians, having encamped on the run, missed their frying pan in the morning, and hence the name was conferred on the place. I did not stop at Frying Pan, but prosecuted my walk to Newgate, where in the piazza of the tavern I found a party of gentlemen from the neighboring plantations carousing over a bowl of toddy and smoking segars. No people could exceed these men in politeness. On my ascending the steps to the piazza every countenance seemed to say: This man has a double claim to our attention because he is a stranger. In a moment there was room made for me to sit down; a new bowl was called for, and every one who addressed me did so with a smile of conciliation. The higher Virginians seem to venerate themselves as men. Whatever may be advanced against Virginians, their good qualities will ever outweigh their defects; and when the effervescence of youth has abated, when reason asserts her empire, there is no man on earth who discovers more exalted sentiments, more contempt for baseness, more love of justice, more sensibility of feeling, than a Virginian. At Newgate my pilgrimage was nearly at an end, for Mr. Ball’s plantation was only distant eight miles.”