Theodosia now enjoyed three as happy years as ever fell to the lot of a young wife.  Tenderly cherished by her husband, whom she devotedly loved, caressed by society, surrounded by affectionate and admiring relations, provided bountifully with all the means of enjoyment, living in the summer in the mountains of Carolina, or at the home of her childhood, Richmond Hill, passing the winters in gay and luxurious Charleston, honored for her own sake, for her father’s, and her husband’s, the years glided rapidly by, and she seemed destined to remain to the last Fortune’s favorite child.  One summer she and her husband visited Niagara, and penetrated the domain of the chieftain Brant, who gave them royal entertainment.  Once she had the great happiness of receiving her father under her own roof, and of seeing the honors paid by the people of the State to the Vice-President.  Again she spent a summer at Richmond Hill and Saratoga, leaving her husband for the first time.  She told him on this occasion that every woman must prefer the society of the North to that of the South, whatever she might say.  “If she denies it, she is set down in my mind as insincere and weakly prejudiced.”  But, like a fond and loyal wife, she wrote, “Where you are, there is my country, and in you are centred all my wishes.”

She was a mother too.  That engaging and promising boy, Aaron Burr Alston, the delight of his parents and of his grandfather, was born in the second year of the marriage.  This event seemed to complete her happiness.  For a time, it is true, she paid dearly for it by the loss of her former robust and joyous health.  But the boy was worth the price.  “If I can see without prejudice,” wrote Colonel Burr, “there never was a finer boy”; and the mother’s letters are full of those sweet, trifling anecdotes which mothers love to relate of their offspring.  Her father still urged her to improve her mind, for her own and her son’s sake, telling her that all she could learn would necessarily find its way to the mind of the boy.  “Pray take in hand,” he writes, “some book which requires attention and study.  You will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater misfortune than to lose your head.”  He praised, too, the ease, good-sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her style, at its best, was not inferior to that of Madame de Sevigne.

Life is frequently styled a checkered scene.  But it was the peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty-one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune and sorrow.  Never had her father’s position seemed so strong and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President; but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious.  Holding property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate could save him from bankruptcy.  At the