wars. For four months even his wife and Troup had, save on
Sundays, few words with him on unlegal matters. His brain excluded every
memory, every interest. For the first time he omitted to write regularly
to Mrs. Mitchell, Hugh Knox, and Peter Lytton. All day and half the
night he walked up and down his library, or his father-in-law's,
reading, memorizing, muttering aloud. His friends vowed that he marched
the length and width of the Confederacy. He never gave a more striking
exhibition of his control over the powers of his intellect than this.
The result was that at the end of four months he obtained a license to
practise as an attorney, and published a "Manual on the Practice of
Law," which, Troup tells us, "served as an instructive grammar to future
students, and became the groundwork of subsequent enlarged practical
treatises." If it be protested that these feats were impossible, I can
only reply that they are historic facts.

It was during these months of study that Aaron Burr came to Albany.

This young man, also, was not unknown to fame; and the period of the
Revolution is the one on which Burr's biographers should dilate, for it
was the only one through which he passed in a manner entirely to his
credit. He was now in Albany, striving for admittance to the bar, but
handicapped by the fact that he had studied only two years, instead of
the full three demanded by law.

While Burr did not belong to the aristocracy of the country, his family
not ranking by any means with the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
Livingstons, Jays, Morrises, Roosevelts, and others of that small and
haughty band, still he came of excellent and respectable stock. His
father had been the Rev. Aaron Burr, President of Princeton College, and
his mother the daughter of the famous Jonathan Edwards. He was
quick-witted and brilliant; and there is no adjective which qualifies
his ambition. He was a year older than Hamilton, about an inch taller,
and very dark. His features were well cut, his eyes black, glittering,
and cold; his bearing dignified but unimposing, for he bent his
shoulders and walked heavily. His face was not frank, even in youth, and
grew noticeably craftier. He and Hamilton were the greatest fops in
dress of their time; but while the elegance and beauty of attire sat
with a peculiar fitness on Hamilton, seeming but the natural
continuation of his high-bred face and easy erect and graceful bearing,
Burr always looked studiously well-