Burr remembered once finding in his grandfather’s study, among a mass of old letters, one in which that great man, in early youth, described his future wife, then known to him only by distant report.  With his keen natural sense of everything fine and poetic, he had been struck with this passage, as so beautifully expressing an ideal womanhood, that he had in his earlier days copied it in his private recueil.

“They say,” it ran, “that there is a young lady who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with such exceeding sweet delight, that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him; that she expects, after a while, to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always.  Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it.  She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you should give her all the world.  She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind.  She will sometimes go from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what.  She loves to be alone, walking in fields and groves, and seems to have some invisible one always conversing with her.”

A shadowy recollection of this description crossed his mind more than once, as he looked into those calm and candid eyes.  Was there, then, a truth in that inner union of chosen souls with God, of which his mother and her mother before her had borne meek witness,—­their souls shining out as sacred lamps through the alabaster walls of a temple?

But then, again, had he not logically met and demonstrated, to his own satisfaction, the nullity of the religious dogmas on which New England faith was based?  There could be no such inner life, he said to himself,—­he had demonstrated it as an absurdity.  What was it, then,—­this charm, so subtile and so strong, by which this fair child, his inferior in age, cultivation, and knowledge of the world, held him in a certain awe, and made him feel her spirit so unapproachable?  His curiosity was piqued.  He felt stimulated to employ all his powers of pleasing.  He was determined, that, sooner or later, she should feel his power.

With Mrs. Scudder his success was immediate, she was completely won over by the deferential manner with which he constantly referred himself to her matronly judgments, and, on returning to the house, she warmly pressed him to stay to dinner.