The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-11-22


Among the more prominent of the Ma
tionals late arrivals are Senator Ben.
Hill and wife, of Georgia. They occu-
py the suit of rooms known as the presi-
Dental parlors. If the walls had tongues
they mi ght discourse Of people prominent
in the past, and, perchance, tell tales OF
private life never suspicioned. But the
tall mantel looks blank under its modern
ornament, the brass mountings of the
fender reflect new faces, the heavy cur,
tains shut in the secrets never voiced,
and in the room sits little, dark-eyed,
prim woman, and a blue-eyed man "from
away down South in Georgia" man
mild as May, velvety, and unassuming
as field dandelion. These rooms where
Senator Hill now lives, on that fatal
fourth of March, which witnessed Buch-
anan's Inauguration, were occupied by
the new President. Twelve hundred
guests we're crowded in the house. In
the evening nearly all were seized by
similar symptoms of poisoning, and
thirty or more died. The dead bodies
lay in rows in the parlors, the sick and
dying were moaning in the halls; q
gloom hung over the city, and extended
to distant homes, from whence had come
guests to witness the Inauguration. The
house had just previous to this been en-
tirely refurnished. 1t was the grand
hotel of the capital, and built in style
of magnifcence rare in those times. The
hotel poisoning is remembered with
horror BY old people, but many of the
Younger ones have never heard of it.
The affair was investigated and the house
examined. No positive clue has ever
been found. SOME said defective drain
age, some poisoned rats in the wells,
some that the sugar was poisoned to ruin
the business of the hotel. tits generally,
I think, believed now that the poison was
mineral poison, and was in the sugar
for the reason that persons not stopping
at the house, who took fancy drinks at
the bar, were also seized by cramps.
Doubtless the new Presidents death was
meditated, but Mr.. Buchanan never
touched sugar, nor ate it in anything, so
that he almost alone escaped the peril.
Some of those beside his Excellency, who
escaped, have been interrogated, and all
those whose address could be found after
the lapse of years, replied that they did
not partake of sugar, even in coffee:
The house was closed, the splendid fur
niture was sold at auction. For years the
hotel was uninhabited. People looked
at the barred windows something as via
itors now pause before Ford's theatre,
where President Lincoln was assassin
ated. Strangers stood in front of it and
related to each other sad incidents of the
inexplicable death which had overtaken
thirty persons in night. Twenty years
ago, a gentleman from New Hampshire,
visiting in Washington, asked to go
through the house. People had been
afraid to enter the walls after the panic.
The gentlemen, upon examination, i'm
mediately leased the building, threw open
the windows, had the house cleansed, one
hundred and fifty loads of dirt taken from
the cellar, put one hundred thousand
dollars worth Of furniture in the hotel,
and was called crazy by his friends: In
December every corner was filled by
guests, and the quaint, low rooms, where
had danced the bellies of quarter of a
century before, were again filled with life
and beauty.