mon street
amours.

And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict
morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and
licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin
has very truly said:

Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that
vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused
to accept the parentage of a child.

"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you KNOW
you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months before
his death.

"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father
of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself
ungrateful for the favor."

There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to show
that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the society of a
woman without having her regarded as his mistress.

When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in Philadelphia
at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter, Dorothy Todd, was
the very youthful widow of an officer. This young woman was rather
free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in his. At the time,
however, nothing was thought of it; but presently Burr brought to the
house the serious and somewhat pedantic James Madison and introduced him
to the hoyden.

Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but
gradually rising to a prominent position in politics--"the great little
Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had
proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one
referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country
answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the
subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he
had a sense of humor:

For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice
to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage... A woman very
rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her
mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation
of obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your
disapproval.

Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways
was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old
association with Burr. At once the story s