ice, except only one--a beautiful woman whose eyes were
as bright and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe on
shore. She quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a certain
scorn of death, said to the others:

"Come, I will show you how to die."

It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been
Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done
and in strict accordance with his teachings.

This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect
equanimity, made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage,
the more so when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.

Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused regarding
his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were told
about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless
pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman
was safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them
astray and then casting them aside.

Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend, wrote
of him long afterward a most unjust account--unjust because we have
proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:

It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a
soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much
time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than
half a century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought.
His intrigues were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were
unhesitatingly violated when they operated as barriers to the indulgence
of his passions. In this particular Burr appears to have been unfeeling
and heartless.

It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of
incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known,
should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality
is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung
promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own
country, Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when
Gladstone was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a
question of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London
clubs were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that
this aged and austere old gentleman was not above seeking com