es in the
Cabinet of General Washington had given him great celebrity. Aged
members of the New York bar remember that Burr alone was the
antagonist who could put Hamilton to his mettle. When other lawyers
were employed against him, Hamilton's manner was that of a man who
felt an easy superiority to the demands upon him; he took few notes;
he was playful and careless, relying much upon the powerful
declamation of his summing up. But when Burr was in the case,--Burr
the wary, the vigilant, who was never careless, never inattentive, who
came into court only after an absolutely exhaustive preparation of his
case, who held declamation in contempt, and knew how to quench its
effect by a stroke of polite satire, or the quiet citation of a
fact,--then Hamilton was obliged to have all his wits about him, and
he was observed to be restless, busy, and serious. There are now but
two or three venerable men among us who remember the keen encounters
of these two distinguished lawyers. The vividness of their
recollection of those scenes of sixty years ago shows what an
impression must have been made upon their youthful minds.

If Hamilton and Burr divided equally between them the honors of the
bar, Burr had the additional distinction of being a leader of the
rising Democratic Party; the party to which, at that day, the youth,
the genius, the sentiment, of the country were powerfully drawn; the
party which, by his masterly tactics, was about to place Mr. Jefferson
in the Presidential chair after ten years of ineffectual struggle.

All this enhanced the _eclat_ of Theodosia's position. As she rode
about the island on her pony, followed at a respectful distance, as
the custom then was, by one of her father's slaves mounted on a
coach-horse, doubtless many a fair damsel of the city repined at her
own homelier lot, while she dwelt upon the many advantages which
nature and circumstances had bestowed upon this gifted and happy
maiden.

She was a beautiful girl. She inherited all her father's refined
beauty of countenance; also his shortness of stature; the dignity,
grace, and repose of his incomparable manner, too. She was a plump,
petite, and rosy girl; but there was that in her demeanor which became
the daughter of an affluent home, and a certain assured, indescribable
expression of face which seemed to say, Here is a maiden who to the
object of her affection could be faithful against an execrating
world,--faithful even unto death.

B