rom the General Government. For the empty
honor of wearing a militia uniform three or four times a year, and
paying a large share of the music assessments, Major Van Ness lost
his seat in Congress.

David Burns died soon after his daughter's marriage, and she
dutifully conveyed to her husband, through the intervention of a
trustee, her paternal inheritance. With a portion of the fortune
thus acquired, Major Van Ness built near the old Burns cottage a
villa which cost thirty thousand dollars, and was a palace fit for
a king. Entertainments the most costly were inaugurated and
maintained in it; wit and song were heard within it, and elegance
and distinction assembled under its hospitable shelter. From its
door-step one could see ships from Europe moored to the docks of
Alexandria, while gliding by daily on the river beside it were
merchantmen from the West Indies, laden for the port of Georgetown.

Major Van Ness and Marcia Burns lived very happily together and
had one child, a daughter, who grew into womanhood, married, and
died a year after her marriage, ere the flowers in her bridal wreath
had faded. Mrs. Van Ness loved her daughter with a love that was
idolatry, and with her death she received a blow from which she
never recovered. She abandoned all the gayeties of the world, and
laid aside her sceptre and crown as queen of society. In the
charity school and orphan-asylum, by the bedside of the sick and
dying, and in the homes of poverty, relieving its wants, she was
found to the day of her death. Her last words to her grief-stricken
husband and friends assembled about her bedside were: "Heaven
bless and protect you; never mind me." The Mayor and City Government
passed appropriate resolutions, and attended her funeral.

Major Van Ness erected a mausoleum after the pattern of the Temple
of Vesta, at a cost of thirty-four thousand dollars, and placed
within it his wife's remains and those of her father and mother.
The stately pile stood in a large inclosure for years on H Street,
beside the orphan asylum which Mrs. Van Ness richly endowed.
Finally the march of improvement, needing all the space available
within the city limits, necessitated the removal of the mausoleum
to Oak Hill Cemetery, in Georgetown, where the remains of John
Howard Payne were subsequently re-interred.

Major Van Ness himself enjoyed everything that worldly preferment
could bestow. By turns he was president of a bank and Mayor of
W