Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/92

76 It was the quaint look of the place which appealed strongest to the senses, and the fact that it is long past a century old, its foundation having been laid in 1748. The boat anchored at Alexandria, and we gazed wistfully up those streets through which Washington had often passed, and looked in vain to see some " vast and venerable pile, so old it seemed only not to fall," but the residences of most of the old inhabitants are the abodes of wealth, and they exhibit evidences of care and preservation.

Alexandria was early a place of some note, for five colonial governors met here by appointment, in 1755, to take measures with General Braddock respecting his expedition to the West. "That expedition proceeded from Alexandria, and tradition still points to the site on which now stands the olden Episcopal Church (but then, in the woods), as the spot where he pitched his tent, while the road over the western hills by which his army withdrew, long bore the name of this unfortunate commander. But the reminiscences which the Alexandrians most cherish are those which associate their town with the domestic attachments and habits of Washington, and the stranger is still pointed to the church of which he was vestryman; to the pew in which he customarily sate; and many striking memorials of his varied life are carefully preserved."

That old church where Washington and his wife were wont to worship, how tenderly it is looked upon now, and with what hallowed feelings! All the commonplace