ived there loved it best of all the places in
the world.

One year after her marriage Theo came on to New York for a visit--I
suppose she stopped at her father's town house, since it was in
spring, and before the country places would naturally be open. At all
events it was during this visit that, fresh from her rice fields
(which never agreed with her), she wrote in a letter:

"... I have just returned from a ride in the country and a
visit to Richmond Hill. Never did I behold this island so
beautiful. The variety of vivid greens, the finely
cultivated fields and gardens, the neat, cool air of the
cit's boxes peeping through straight rows of tall poplars,
and the elegance of some gentlemen's seats, commanding a
view of the majestic Hudson, and the high, dark shores of
New Jersey, altogether form a scene so lovely, so touching,
and to me so new, that I was in constant rapture."

In 1804 came the historic quarrel between Aaron Burr and Alexander
Hamilton. Since this chapter is the story of Richmond Hill and not the
life of Aaron Burr, I shall not concern myself with the whys or the
wherefores of that disastrous affair.

Histories must perforce deal with the political aims, successes and
failures of men; must cover a big canvas and sing a large and
impersonal song. But just here we have only to think of these old-time
phantoms of ours as they affect or are affected by the old-time
regions in which for the nonce we are interested. To Richmond
Hill--with its white columns and shadow-flinging portico, its gardens
and its oak trees and its silver pond--it was of small import that the
master just missed being President of the United States, that he did
become Vice-president, and President of the Senate, and that he was
probably as able a jurist as ever distinguished the Bar of New York;
also that he made almost as many enemies as he did friends. But it was
decidedly the concern of the sweet and imposing old house on Richmond
Hill that it was from its arms, so to speak, that he went out in a
cold, white rage to the duel with his chief enemy; that he returned,
broken and heartsick, doubly defeated in that he had chanced to be the
victor, to the protection of Richmond Hill.

I cannot help believing that the household gods of a man take a very
special interest and a very personal part in what fortunes befall him.
More than any deities of old, they live with and in him; they at once