upon regularity
of hours. Upon going away upon a journey he would leave written orders
for her tutors, detailing the employments of each day; and, during his
absence, a chief topic of his letters was the lessons of the children.
_Children_,--for, that his Theodosia might have the advantage of a
companion in her studies, he adopted the little Natalie, a French
child, whom he reared to womanhood in his house. "The letters of our
dear children," he would write,

"are a feast. To hear that they are employed, that no time
is absolutely wasted, is the most flattering of anything
that could be told me of them. It insures their affection,
or is the best evidence of it. It insures in its
consequences everything I am ambitious of in them. Endeavor
to preserve regularity of hours; it conduces exceedingly to
industry."

And his wife would answer:

"I really believe, my dear, that few parents can boast of
children whose minds are so prone to virtue. I see the
reward of our assiduity with inexpressible delight, with a
gratitude few experience. My Aaron, they have grateful
hearts."

Or thus: "Theo [seven years old] ciphers from five in the morning
until eight, and also the same hours in the evening. This prevents our
riding at those hours."

When Theodosia was ten years old, Mary Wollstonecraft's eloquent
little book, "A Vindication of the Eights of Woman," fell into Burr's
hands. He was so powerfully struck by it that he sat up nearly all
night reading it. He showed it to all his friends. "Is it owing to
ignorance or prejudice," he wrote, "that I have not yet met a single
person who had discovered, or would allow the merit of this work?" The
work, indeed, was fifty years in advance of the time; for it
anticipated all that is rational in the opinions respecting the
position and education of women which are now held by the ladies who
are stigmatized as the Strong-minded, as well as by John Mill, Herbert
Spencer, and other economists of the modern school. It demanded fair
play for the _understanding_ of women. It proclaimed the essential
equality of the sexes. It denounced the awful libertinism of that age,
and showed that the-weakness, the ignorance, the vanity, and the
seclusion of women prepared them to become the tool and minion of bad
men's lust. It criticised ably the educational system of Rousseau,
and, with still more severity, the popular works of bishops and