Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT. 239
please, but tear Congress away from New York in any way.
Do not rise without effecting this business." But the NewYorkers did not hesitate to retort upon Philadelphia. Captain
Freneau, afterward Mr. Jefferson's great editorial advocate, and
the assailant of General Washington in the Philadelphiia National Gazette, wrote some verses, in which he made a Philadelphia house-maid, in a letter to her friend in New York, speak
of Philadelphia as follows:
" Six weeks my dear mistress has been in a fret,
And nothing but Congress will do for her yet.
She says they must come, or her senses she'll lose;
From morning to night she is reading the news,
And loves the dear fellows that vote for our town,
Since no one can relish New York but a clown.
" She tells us as how she has read in her books
That God gives the meat but the devil the cooks;
And Grumbleton told us, who often shoots flying,
That fish you have plenty, but spoil them in frying;
That your streets are as crooked as crooked can be,
Right forward three perches he never could see;
That his view was cut short with a house or a shop
That stood in his way and obliged him to stop."
rJo which the New York maid responds to her friend:
"Well, Nannie, I'm sorry to find, since you writ us,
That Congress at last has determined to quit us;
You now may begin with your dish-cloths and brooms,
To be scouring your knockers and scrubbing your roons4
"As for us, my dear Nannie, we're much in a pet,
And hundreds of houses will be "To be Let;"
Our streets, that were just in a way to look clever,
Will now be neglected and nasty as ever.
This Congress unsettled's a very sad thing,
Seven years, my dear Nannie, they've been on the wing.
My master would rather saw timber or dig,
Than to have it removed to Conogocheague,
Where the houses and kitchens are yet to framed,
The trees to be felled, and the streets to be named."