Watertown Republican

Mr. Sumner's First Days in Washington.

Senator Sumner recently met an old friend who enjoyed the honor of being the only man in Washington to live in the same house with him when in 1834 the future Senator first visited the Capitol. This was Dr. Blake, President of the Metropolitan Bank, and a member of the Board of Public Works. Dr. Blake was boarding at the house of Mrs. Peyton, at the corner of the avenue and Four-and-a-half street, when young Sumner, tall, fresh, and Bostonian, came there to lodge. He had just seen the first slave on the stage road between Baltimore and Washington, regarded him with wonder, curiosity and indignation. Before the guests had made up their minds what kind of a youth he might be, the Marshal of the Supreme Court stopped with his carriage and left the cards of all the Justices for him, a formality which made no little talk. This courtesy was due to Judge Story, whose pupil Mr. Sumner was, and who had advised him at the termination of his studies to attend the Supreme Court and get the spirit and association of that Tribunal.

"At that time all judges messed together in Mrs. Carter's boarding-house, which was recently torn down to extend the Capitol grounds. They drank what was called the Judicial Madeira, an importation direct from Madeira Island which George Washington ordered through the port of Alexandria, and seeing the world-famed name in the order, the shippers picked out quite a superior pipe.

"When Gen. Washington died, his nephew Bushrod, who was a Justice in the Supreme Court, continued the annual order, and next John Marshall fell heir to it, so that to hear Mr. Sumner relate the sequence gave one a kind of musty hilarity such as might have been felt at the tomb of Washington, if the old General had got up by request to join us in a glass of the original importation. The Justices of the court used their dining-table for consultation, and after they had messed together the cloth was removed, and with nothing but the Judicial Madeira and the laws of the Republic, they tempered justice with mercy in their decisions.-N. Y. Graphic.