shamefaced stragglers from the defensive force, trickled in from the woods in the suburban country where they had been hiding since the battle; the streets were strewn with the wreckage of a cyclone which had swept the valley almost simultaneously with the hostile troops, unroofing houses, uprooting trees, demolishing chimneys, and generally supplementing the disasters of warfare. Indeed, almost the only potentiality of evil that had not come to pass was an uprising of the slaves, which had been widely feared, as some of the restless spirits among them had been overheard counseling their fellows to join the British in looting the city and then make a break for freedom. The Madisons, after a brief visit with friends, rented the Octagon house at the corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth Street, now the headquarters of the American Institute of Architects. It was here that President Madison signed the treaty of Ghent, binding Great Britain and the United States to a peace which has remained for a whole century unbroken. Here, too, Dolly Madison held her republican court, the most famous since Martha Washington’s in New York, and far eclipsing that in splendor. To provide a meeting-place for Congress till the Capitol could be occupied once more, a building which stood at the corner of F and Seventh Streets was made over for the purpose. It proved so uncomfortable, however, as to revive with increased zest the discussion whether, in view of the spread of population through the newly opened West, it would not be wiser to remove the seat of government to some fairly accessible point in that part of the country. The agitation alarmed the more important property-owners in Washington, who, in order to head it off before it had gone too far, hastily organized a company to put up a temporary but better equipped substitute for the Capitol. They chose a site a few hundred yards to the eastward of the burned edifice, and there built a long house which is still standing, though now divided into dwellings. The stratagem accomplished its aim, and Congress stayed in its improvised domicile till 1819. This occupancy gave the building the title, “the Old Capitol,” that clings to it to-day in spite of the changes it has undergone in the interval.