Among the noted names associated with Georgetown, outside of political life, may be mentioned those of Joel Benton, the poet and essayist, who bought a farm on the Washington side of Rock Creek, since famous as the Kalorama estate; Robert Fulton, the pioneer in steam navigation, who made some of his early experiments with water-craft and submarine explosives on the small streams of the neighborhood; George Peabody, financier and philanthropist, who came as a poor boy from Massachusetts and worked as a clerk in a store in Bridge Street; William W. Corcoran, whose later career somewhat resembled Peabody’s, and whose real start in life dated from the failure of a little shop he kept in the heart of the town; and, last but not least, a youthful belle whose romance demands a paragraph or two of its own. Baron Bodisco, Russian Minister to the United States during the Van Buren administration, lived, as did most of the foreign envoys of that time, in Georgetown. He was a bachelor, well on toward sixty years of age, uncompromisingly ugly, with a face covered with wrinkles, and a bald head which he tried to conceal under a somewhat obtrusive wig. He had for visitors one winter two young nephews, for whom he gave a dancing party at the legation, inviting all the socially eligible boys and girls in town. By some accident, one of his invitations miscarried and failed to reach Harriet Beall Williams, a most attractive and popular schoolgirl of sixteen. He hastened to repair his error as soon as he discovered it, and on the evening of the party hunted her up to make his apologies in person. It was a case of love at first sight. After that he contrived to meet her occasionally on her way to or from school, and ere long he became an avowed suitor for her hand. The courtship, though not displeasing to the girl, was for some time discouraged by her family. Finding her resolved to accept her elderly lover, however, they withdrew their active opposition, and Beauty and the Beast, as they were commonly called, were married in June.