that it was indeed an ideal city -- for future
residence.

At the time when Dolly Madison came to
Washington, and by invitation of President
Jefferson assisted in his official hospitalities,
the White House stood on the spot where it
stands to-day, but uninclosed, on a stretch of
waste and barren ground, separated from the
Capitol by a dreary and almost impassable
marsh, while the presidential mansion, unfin-
ished as it was, and standing among the rough
masses of stone and rubbish, looked more like
a ruin than a rising dwelling. Of its interior
we have a very graphic description in a letter
written by Abigail Adams, whose ill fortune it
was to take the brunt of the pioneering at the
capital, and to have only time enough to set
the White House in order for her successors.
The conditions under which she began her
life in Washington would surely have daunted
any spirit less indomitable than hers.

On the twenty-first of November, 1800, she.
writes to her daughter Mrs. Smith, from the
White House: --

"MY DEAR CHILD. -- I arrived here on Sunday
last, and without meeting with any accident worth
noticing, except losing ourselves when we left Bal-
timore, and going eight or nine miles on the Fred-
erick road, by which means we were obliged to go

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