ernment; let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian, for the principles of republicanism and Christianity are no less friendly to universal and perpetual peace, than they are to universal and equal liberty.

"II. Let a power be given to this Secretary to establish and maintain free schools in every city, village and township of the United States; and let him be made responsible for the talents, principles, and morals of all his school-masters. Let the youth of our country be carefully instructed in reading, writing and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind; the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with all men, but to forgive, nay more- -to love our very enemies. It belongs to it further to teach us that the Supreme Being alone possesses a power to take away human life, and that we rebel against his laws, whenever we undertake to execute death in any way whatever upon any of his creatures.

"III. Let every family in the United States be furnished at the public expense, by the Secretary of this office, with a copy of an American edition of the Bible. This measure has become the more necessary in our country, since the banishment of the Bible, as a school-book, from most of the schools in the United States. Unless the price of this book be paid for by the public, there is reason to fear that in a few years it will be met with only in courts of justice or in magistrate's offices; and should the absurd mode of establishing truth by kissing this sacred book fall into disuse, it may probably, in the course of the next generation, be seen only as a curiosity on a shelf in Mr. Peale's museum.

"IV. Let the following sentences be inscribed in letters of gold over the door of every home in the United States:

The Son of Man Came into the World, Not To Destroy Men's Lives, But To Save Them.

"V. To inspire a veneration for human life, and an horror at the shedding of human blood, let all those laws be repealed which authorize juries, judges, sheriffs, or hangmen to assume the resentments of individuals, and to commit murder

in cold blood in any case whatever. Until this reformation in our code of penal jurisprudence takes place, it will be in vain to attempt to introduce universal and perpetual peace in our country.

"VI. To subdue that passion for war, which education, added to human depravity, have made universal, a familiarity with the instruments of death, as well as all military shews, should be carefully avoided. For which reason, militia laws should everywhere be repealed, and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside : reviews tend to lessen the horrors of a battle by connecting them with the charms of order; militia laws generate idleness and vice, and thereby produce the wars they are said to prevent; military dresses facinate the minds of young men, and lead them from serious and useful professions; were there no uniforms, there would probably be no armies; lastly military titles feed vanity, and keep up ideas in the mind which lessen a sense of the folly and miseries of

war.

"In the seventh and last place, let a large room, adjoining the federal hall, be appointed for transacting the business and preserving all the records of this office. Over the door of this room let there be a sign, on which the figures of a lamb, a dove, and an olive-branch should be painted, together with the following inscriptions in letters of gold:

Peace on Earth-Good-Will To Man.

Ah! Why Should Men Forget That They Are Brethren? Within this apartment let there be a collection of ploughshares and pruning-hooks made out of swords and spears; and on each of the walls of the apartment the following pictures as large as life:

"1. A lion eating straw with an ox, and an adder playing upon the lips of a child.

"2. An Indian boiling his venison in the same pot with a citizen of Kentucky.

"3. Lord Cornwallis and Tippo Saib, under the shade of a sycamore-tree in the East-Indies, drinking Madeira wine out of the same decanter.

"4. A group of French and Austrian soldiers dancing arm in arm, under a bower erected in the neighborhood of Mons.

"5. A St. Domingo planter, a man of color, and a native of Africa, legislating together in the same colonial assembly. "To complete the entertainment of this delightful apartment, let a group of young ladies, clad in white robes, assemble every day at a certain hour, in a gallery to be erected for the purpose, and sing odes, and hymns, and anthems in praise of the blessings of peace.

"One of these songs should consist of the following beautiful lines of Mr. Pope:

''Peace o'er the world her olive wand extends,

And white-rob'd innocence from heaven descends;

All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail,
Returning justice lifts aloft her scale.'"'

Benjamin Banneker was born at Ellicott City, Md., November 9, 1731. His grandmother, a white woman, gave him his first rudiments of reading, at a very early age. She was an English woman who, for some trivial offense, was sent to the colonies, where she served in bondage for several years. Buying her freedom, she purchased a small farm, which she cultivated with the assistance of two black men whom she had purchased from the slave ship that brought them over. She married one of these and her daughter, Banneker's mother, also married a negro who assumed her name. Notwithstanding this mixture he was of dark complexion, and is described at sixty years, by contemporaries, as follows: "A large man of noble appearance, with venerable hair, wearing a coat of superfine drab broad cloth, and a broad brimmed hat, and to have resembled Benjamin Franklin.”

His modesty is also vouched for, as he refused a seat at the table of the commissioners who had met to settle the boundary line of the District of Columbia. His almanac was first published in 1792, and continued.

until his death in 1806. Besides his literary attainments, Banneker is credited with mechanical ability, and is said to have made, entirely with his own hands, a clock of which it is said every portion was made in America. The Georgetown Weekly Ledger of March 12, 1791, speaks of the arrival at Georgetown of Ellicott. and L'Enfant who were "attended by Benjamin Banneker, an Ethiopian, whose abilities as surveyor and astronomer already proves that Mr. Jefferson's concluding that that race of men were void of mental endowment, was without foundation.'

It may be stated that Jefferson, afterward, when Secretary of State, highly praised his ability. In his manuscripts which have come to us, his handwriting would do credit to a trained librarian. That his color did not affect his reputation is affirmed by the friendship of Washington, Jefferson, Ellicott and many distinguished scientists of Europe, who called him the "African astronomer."

Maryland should in some manner show honor to the memory of this distinguished citizen who, notwithstanding the race prejudice of the time, rose to eminence in scientific attainments, the study of which at that early date was almost unknown.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A BOYHOOD IN

GEORGETOWN.

BY WILLIAM A. GORDON.

(Read before the Society, April 18, 1916.)

At the present time when Washington has grown to be a large city, when improved housing and better sanitation have made living more pleasant and life safer, and when lifelong residents know even by sight but few of those passed on the street, it is difficult to picture what were the surroundings, what the life, and what the manners and customs of the people who lived here sixty or seventy years ago. Thanks to the research of students and the many books which have been written, we are well informed as to the Colonial and Revolutionary history of our people. This Society has done much in collecting and preserving interesting and valuable historical data relating to the District, especially of the period since it was set apart for Federal purposes. Little, however, has been written about the daily life and customs of the people who lived here. If someone equipped for the work and enthusiastic on the subject would undertake to tell us of the life, manners and customs of the people of this District during the early part of the nineteenth century, as Macauley did for the English people, it would be a valuable contribution to local history and make interesting reading.

Though feeling hesitation in taking up the time of this Society with matters of lighter character than are contained in the papers usually read before it, I will with your permission and craving your forbearance, tell you of some things which made an indelible impres