.

The Potter's Field preceded the poor-house on this site by many years.
The almshouse was formerly erected on M Street, between Sixth and
Seventh, and, being removed here, it burned to the ground in the month
of March, fourteen years ago, when the present brick structure was
raised. The entire premises, of which the main part is the almshouse
garden, occupy less than fifty acres, and the number of inmates is
less than two hundred, the females preponderating in the proportion of
three to one. Under the same roof are the almshouse and the
work-house, the inmates of the former being styled "Infirmants," and
of the latter "Penitents." The government of the institution is vested
in three commissioners, to whom is responsible the intendent, Mr.
Joseph F. Hodgson, a very cheerful and practical-looking "Bumble."

Every Wednesday the three commissioners meet at this almshouse and
receive the weekly reports of the intendent, physician, and gardener.
Once every year these officers, and the matron, wagoner, and baker are
elected. Sixteen ounces of bread and eight ounces of beef are the
ration of the district pauper. The turnkey, gate-keeper, chief
watchmen, and chief nurses, are selected from the inmates. The gates
are closed at sunset, and the lights go out at eight P.M. all
winter. The inmates wear a uniform, labelled in large letters
"Work-house," or "Washington Asylum."

The poor-house is an institution coeval with the capital. We are told
that while crabbed old Davy Burns, the owner of the most valuable part
of the site of Washington City, was haggling with General Washington
over his proportion of lots, his neglected and intemperate brother,
Tommy, was an inmate of the poor-house.

Thus, while the Romulus of the place married his daughter to a
Congressman, and was buried in a "mausoleum" on H Street, Remus died
without the walls and mingled his ashes, perhaps, with paupers.

The vaunted metropolis of the republican hopes of mankind--for such
was Washington, the fabulous city, advertised and praised in every
capital of Western Europe--drew to its site artists, adventurers, and
speculators from all lands. From Thomas Law, a secretary of Warren
Hastings, who wasted the earnings of India on enterprises here, to a
Frenchman who died on the guillotine for practising with an infernal
machine upon the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the long train of
pilgrims came and saw and despaired, and many of them, perhaps, lie in
the Potte