[NOTE.-Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, author of an "Historical Sketch" of the war, is the authority for stating that the British troops fired at the Capitol before entering and taking possession of it. He says, "Drawing up their column on the east of the building, after a short consideration whether it should be exploded by gunpowder or consumed by fire, the latter was resolved upon by the enemy, as was believed, lest the blowing up should injure adjacent dwellings. The troops were ordered to fire a volley into the windows, after which the commanders let their followers into the interior." This statement is reiterated by a gentleman from Bladensburg, vouched for as reliable by Mr. Ingersoll, and "confirmed by the important testimony of a highly respectable English officer." This Bladensburg gentleman, "with all the recollections [Ingersoll says] of the very spot," gives the following account of the firing on General Ross. He says that after Commodore Barney was wounded and captured, "his sailors and marines, retreating reluctantly, were burning with anxiety to have another brush with the enemy, but were marched off by the officers, their rear being closely followed by the British troops until they entered the suburbs of Washington, when a party of the sailors entered a three-story brick dwelling-house belonging to Robert Sewell, and awaited the near approach of the enemy's column, led by General Ross in person, when they fired a volley which killed or disabled the horse upon which the general was mounted. The sailors then retreated by the rear of the building, and the British set fire to and destroyed the house." With respect to the elaborate dinner said to have been set out for the President and invited guests at the White House, Ingersoll says, "Mr. John Sousa, Mr. Madison's porter, a respectable Frenchman, who still (in 1849) survives, pronounces all this account of food a fable."

The private houses and the stores pillaged, according to Ingersoll, were those of Messrs. Spriggs, Boon, Burch,

Long, Rapine, Watterson, McCormick, Caldwell, Elliott, B. and C. Burns, Ricks, Crampton, and General Washington; and the dwellings burnt were those of Messrs. Sewell, Ball, Frost, Phillips, Tomlinson, and Mrs. Hamilton, including the large hotel belonging to David Carroll, of Duddington & Co. In his official report, Admiral Cockburn boastingly said, "In short, sir, I do not believe a vestige of public property or store of any kind which could be converted to the use of the Government, escaped destruction." H. K.]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PENALTY ENVELOPES: A LITTLE INSIDE HISTORY REGARDING THEIR INTRODUCTION.

Ir would require several pages to present a detailed account of my years of vexatious, gratuitous labor in obtaining the introduction of the official "penalty envelope;" but the following article which I furnished to the Boston Herald of July 12, 1894, must suffice for the present occasion:

In the Herald of the 9th inst., there is what appears to be a valuable historical account of United States postagestamps, but it doubtless contains some errors, one of which I respectfully ask sufficient space to point out, since something of my own action ten years and over after I left the post-office department is connected with it. The writer

states:

"In order to put a stop to abuses of the franking privilege, official stamps were provided in 1873 for each of the executive departments of the government for use on official matter sent through the mails. They were of about the same denominations as the ordinary stamps for the use of the public. After a few years' trial they were gradually abandoned, and in their place the post-office department issued official penalty envelopes for official business. The last of the official stamps, which turned

out to be a still greater source of abuse than the old franking practice, came to pass in 1879."

The first act authorizing the use of the penalty envelope bears date March 4, 1877, when it went into effect at once. Its use would have been universal in the executive departments but for a decision of the Attorney-General that, Congress having made an appropriation for departmental postage-stamps at the same time, it was its intention that both the penalty envelopes and stamps might be used. It was natural for the third assistant postmaster-general, the financial officer of the department, to ask an appropriation for the stamps then in use, as it was not known whether the penalty envelope would be authorized or not; but, when the question arose, Senator Hamlin, chairman of the committee on post-offices and post-roads, who had requested me to submit my device to the committee (for I may be allowed, as I have the right in justice to myself, to say it was my device), wrote to me from his home in Bangor, saying: "You and I know it was the purpose of the law that the penalty envelope should take the place of the departmental stamps." However, he advised that I should seek for remedy by an amended bill, which I prepared, with various (improvements, taking care to add a clause, as I did in the first bill, repealing the stamp act, and this was presented at the next session of Congress. When it came finally to pass, on March 4, 1879, as bad luck would have it, it was tacked on to the general post-office appropriation bill, as the first had been, leaving out the repealing clause. Meantime the third assistant continued to ask for the stamp appropriation, in defiance of the purpose and desire to get rid of the stamps, which the adjutant-general and commissioner of internal revenue both, I remember, denounced as an intolerable nuisance; and so both systems were kept up, to the annoyance of all the departments, except the postoffice, where the penalty envelope was universally used from the passage of the first act.

To make a long story short, I drew a third bill and "lobbied" for it, pro bono publico, both through the press and in Congress, until at length, in spite of the persistent opposition of the third assistant postmaster-general, who, strange to say, was allowed to have his own way in the matter, the amended act became a law, broader in its scope than originally intended, and forbidding the further use of the departmental stamps on July 5, 1884. Thereupon the stamps in enormous quantities, mostly in the hands of the contractors, were ordered to be destroyed.

Now, I do not hesitate to say that, had the first penalty envelope act been allowed, as it was intended, entirely to supplant the official stamps, the government, in the seven years or more I literally fought for this reform, might have saved in clerk hire, the prevention of fraud, etc., thousands upon thousands of dollars.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN HOUR WITH DANIEL WEBSTER.

EVERYTHING relating to Daniel Webster is of interest, from his boyhood to the close of his life, October 24, 1852, at the age of threescore years and ten. The autobiography of his early life plainly shows "the stuff he was made of," exhibiting, as it does, the essential features of the best New England character. In the first school he attended, only reading and writing were taught, and as to these, he says, "the first I generally could perform better than the teacher, and the last a good master could hardly instruct me in; writing was so laborious, irksome, and repulsive an occupation to me always. My masters used to tell me that they feared, after all, my fingers were destined for the ploughtail."

In May, 1796, young Webster was placed in Phillips Academy, at Exeter, New Hampshire, where his instructors were Mr. Thacher, afterward judge of the municipal court of Boston, and Nicholas Emery, subsequently a distinguished counsellor and judge of the supreme court, well known to the writer, at Portland. Says Mr. Webster: "I am proud to call them both masters. I believe I made tolerable progress in most branches which I attended to, while in school; but there was one thing I could not do. I could not make a declamation; I could not speak before the school. The kind and excellent Buckminster [his Latin teacher] sought, especially, to persuade me to perform the exercises of declamation, like other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory and recite, and rehearse, in my own room, over and over again; yet when the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that I would venture; but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification."

His instructors well knew how greatly success in life often depends on the ability to give free utterance to one's sentiments, without embarrassment, before a public assembly; and hence their urgency. What but that invaluable talent, or acquisition, assures the preference to many over their associates, who, in point of general information, are in all respects their equals if not superiors, but whose speeches, when called for, lie hidden, as it were, and only come to the mind with facility and triumphant effect when they are safe from observation,-oftener than otherwise, in bed.

In 1802, at twenty years of age, Mr. Webster went to Fryeburg, Maine, "to keep school," at the rate of three