he repaired again, ten days later, on the eve of his departure for Annapolis, to bid farewell to his officers. In this same building, and in the same Long Room, the first meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce had been held, in 1768, fifteen years before any similar association was organized in Great Britain. This hostelry had, indeed, been the fashionable rendezvous of New Yorkers since 1762, when the shop at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets was converted to still more public uses by Samuel Fraunces ("Black Tom"), who in later years was to become the first President's steward. At the beginning it was known as the Queen's Head Tavern, its sign bearing a portrait of Queen Charlotte. Enlarged, and otherwise altered, but not improved, Fraunces's Tavern is still, as it has always been, a public-house, though fashion has long since deserted it. It would be most deplorable if the march of improvement (in whose name, as in Liberty's, so many offences are committed) should ever be allowed to obliterate this most aged and interesting relic of old New York.
The war of 1812 was by no means popular with the representative merchants of New
