Apropos of this, there is one rather human little tale which is comforting to read, dropped down, as it is, in the middle of so wildly brilliant a career, so colossally disastrous a destiny.

While Burr was living at Richmond Hill, he was often obliged to take coach journeys to outside points.  One day he was on his way home from Albany and stopped at a roadhouse at Kingston.  While he was eating and drinking and the horses were being changed, he saw a drawing which interested him.  He asked to see more by the same artist, for he had a keen appreciation of skill in all lines.

This and the other sketches shown him were the work of a young fellow called John Vanderlyn, who shortly was summoned to meet the great Burr.  The lad was apprenticed to a wagon-maker, and had absolutely no prospects nor any hope of cultivating his undoubted talent.  Like any other boy young and poor and in a position so humble as to offer no opportunity of improvement, he was even afraid of change, and seemed unwilling to take the plunge of leaving his master and taking his chance in the great world.

“Very well,” said Burr.  “When you change your mind, just put a clean shirt in your pocket, come to New York and asked for Colonel Burr.”

Then he dismissed the boy from his presence and the whole episode from his mind, got into his coach and continued on his way.

Two months later he was at breakfast in the dining-room at Richmond Hill,—­with Theo probably pouring out his “dish of coffee,”—­when a vast disturbance arose downstairs.  A roughly dressed lad had presented himself at the front door and insisted on seeing Colonel Burr, in spite of all the resistance of his manservant.  At last he succeeded in forcing his way past, and made his appearance in the breakfast-room, followed by the startled and indignant servant.  Burr did not recognise him in the least, but the youth walked up to him, pulled a shirt—­of country make but quite clean—­out of his coat pocket, and held it out.

Immediately it all came back to Burr, and he was delighted by the simplicity with which the wagon-maker’s apprentice had taken him at his word.  No one could play the benefactor more generously when he chose, and he lost no time in sending Vanderlyn to Paris to study art.  So brilliantly did the young man acquit himself in the ateliers there that within a very few years he was the most distinguished of all American painters in Europe.  In Henry Brevoort’s Letters are references to his commission to paint General Jackson, among others.

And now comes the pleasant part of this little story within a story: 

In 1808, Aaron Burr was an exile in London.  His trouble with Hamilton, his mad scheme of empire and trial for treason, his political unpopularity, had made him an outcast; and at that time, he, the most fascinating, and at one time the most courted of men, lived and moved without a friend.  And he met Vanderlyn,—­once the wistful lad who drew pictures when his master wanted him to turn spokes.  Now Vanderlyn was a big man, with a name in the world and money in his pocket, and—­Aaron Burr’s warm and grateful friend.  Burr was living in lodgings at eight shillings a week at that time, and his only caller was John Vanderlyn.