creature hounded forth from
her father's peaceful home in Philadelphia, with her child in her
arms--driven almost to the protection of the man whose crime she
abhorred, and from whom in her first frenzied grief she was even
willing to be for ever separated. There have not been wanting certain
persons, headed by that noble patriot and veracious gentleman, Colonel
Aaron Burr, who from time to time have busied themselves in putting
stray hints together with the intent to make Arnold's wife an
accomplice, if not the direct instigator, of his infamous design;
but there is not in existence, so far as I have been able to learn,
a particle of evidence sufficient to justify the casting of ever so
small a stone at the memory of this most unfortunate lady, whose name
is so pitilessly linked with that of the traitor.

She must have been extremely beautiful. I have had the good fortune to
see her portrait, painted about 1795 at Bath, England, by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, and now in the possession of her grand-niece, a lady to
whom I am indebted for much that I have been able to gather of the
character of Mrs. Arnold. The picture is taken in crayons, and the
colors are wonderfully fresh and lovely after eighty years and a
voyage across the sea, the delicate flesh-tints being especially well
preserved. Besides real beauty of feature, there is an enchanting
softness in the character of the face that seems to belong only to
temperaments the most feminine and refined. A pale pink gown falls
back from her gracious neck and shoulders, liberally and innocently
displayed according to the fashion of the time, and is tied about
her waist with a broad sky-blue ribbon: her hair, lightly dashed with
powder and rolled away from her face, strays in rich curls about her
throat. A child of two or three years leans upon her knee, and pulls
at one of her ringlets with a roguish smile upon his chubby face.

The century that has nearly elapsed since Arnold's defection has not
served to lighten in any degree the load of obloquy that rests
upon his name. In the whole world no man has been found willing
to undertake his defence; yet a believer in the dark old Calvinist
doctrine might urge in the traitor's favor the thousand invisible
influences which from the very birth of the wretched man seem to have
goaded him on in the downward path that led to his final disgrace and
ruin. His home-training, if such it might be called, was of the
very worst. His mother an