From an accurate attention to the dates of your letters, I discover that you write on Sunday only; that if, by accident or mental indisposition, to which people in warm climates are liable, the business should be put off for that day, it lays over to the next Sunday, and so to a third or fourth, according to exigences, active or passive. Your letter, dated the 22d, but, in fact, written on Sunday the 21st, was received by the mail preceding the last, which brought nothing. This letter is a confirmation of my theory of provocations, which I have lately enlarged and more accurately defined, deducing it from philosophical principles, and adapting it to different climates. When this volume shall be ready for publication, I propose to add, in an appendix, by way of illustration, a series of our letters.
What you say of Huger shall receive due attention. Which Maria did your husband go for, the biped or the quadruped? It is impossible to determine from any thing in your letter. On the subject of busts you are more whimsical than even your father; just now you had something in view; but, on the 22d of February, "worse than any part of the United States." I have no time to give you now an explanation of your ice phenomenon, but will talk with T.I. and W.E. on the subject. Your last was sealed on the writing, a vulgarism which I again condemn. Adieu.
A. BURR.
TO THEODOSIA.
Washington, March 8, 1802.
At the moment of closing your letter, this scrap of a newspaper [1] caught my eye, and is sent for your amusement. It is aimed at Aaron Burr, by whom, it is well known, the publication of the book [2] is delayed or suppressed. The book consists of five hundred pages, principally low scurrility and illy-told private anecdotes; with about thirty pages of high eulogium on A. B. There may, for aught I know, have been twenty other publications criminating the person by whom the work has been suppressed. They are so utterly lost on me, that I never should have seen even this, but that it came enclosed to me from a friend in New-York, who is solicitous for my honour, &c.
You may judge of the purity and decency of the book when I mention that some dozen of persons, by name, are charged with being bribed by British gold, and there is a surmise that General Pinckney is not reputed very honest. Of all the federal men, General Hamilton alone is treated with respect, even to flattery. My "solicitous friend" has given me a curious fact, of which I was ignorant till the receipt of his letter. Barlas, a Scotchman, the publisher of the book, is private tutor to the children of General Hamilton. Adieu.
A. BURR.
TO JOSEPH ALSTON.
Washington, March 8, 1802.