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Now about six months they have paid only twelve dollars and a half per month for the part of the basement held by them.
   Your petitioners wish to obtain possession of this basement room.  They respectfully represent that by reason of the mode in which it is  now used and the offensive odors arising thereupon, they are unable to rent to advantage the remainder of the building and especially the large Hall above which has been generally used for concerts and similar entertainments and  exhibitions.  Thus the whole property which cost your petitioners a large sum and is reasonably worth between twenty and thirty thousand dollars is only yielding to your Petitioners a rent of about four hunderd and fifty dollars per annum of gross rent.  The taxes alone will much more than absorb this amount.  THe sale of the property is also impeded by the mode in which it is now used.
   Your petitioners do not believe that it will be your pleasure as the Military Representative of the United States, to permit us to suffer any longer the injury we are sustaining as herein stated.
   No part of this property has ever been rented by us to the Confederate Government or its officers. A single reason is the basement was impressed by the Medical Purveyor's Department and occupied by them about three months during the first year of the war.  
   Whereupon we pray that in order may be made for delivering to us, as soon as practicable of the premises in question with the boilers fixtures and utensils to us belonging.
Barksdale and Read