to beaus
In powdered wigs and faultless hose;
Or merchant ghosts survey the skies
And venture guesses weatherwise
Regarding winds that will prevail
To speed their ships about to sail._

_Still in the shaded hillside streets
A trace of old-time welcome greets
The passer-by who has a flare
For scenes of old. No longer there
A buoyant Georgetown stands alone,
The Federal City having grown
Until their boundaries overlap;
So that, deleted from the map,
Though once the Federal City's host,
Georgetown itself is now a ghost._

_Foreword_

It is not at all in my mind to write a history of Georgetown. Several
have been written, but I do want, very, very much, to paint a portrait
of this dear old town of my birth where my parents, my grandparents,
great-grandfathers and one great-great-grandfather lived, and which I
love so dearly.

A portrait, partly of its physical features, its streets, its houses and
gardens, some of which still exist in their pristine glory but, alas,
many of which have gone the way of so-called progress. In place of the
dignified houses of yore, of real architectural beauty, stand rows of
cheap dwellings or stores, erected mostly in the seventies and eighties
when architecture was at its worst. In 1895 it was that the old names of
the streets were taken away and from then on we've been just an adjunct
of Washington.

Not only of its physical side do I wish to tell, but I want to paint a
picture of the kind of people who lived here, from the beginning up
through the gay nineties--nearly one hundred and fifty years. Of the
kind of things they did, their work, their play, their thoughts and
their beliefs, for the character of the town, like human beings, was
formed largely by their beliefs, and these old Scotsmen--for they were
greatly in the majority--laid a great deal of stress on their
Presbyterian form of Christianity. Witness the oath that had to be taken
by the Flour Inspector on February 24, 1772: "I, Thomas Brannan, do
declare that I do believe that there is not any trnsubstantiation in
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper or in the elements of bread and
wine, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever."

And yet, with this strong prejudice, they cooperated and lived on
friendly terms with the Roman Catholics who, very soon after the taking
of this particular oath, founded their college and established the