In
many a tender passage she praised his fortitude. "I witness," she
wrote, in a well-known letter,
"your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new
misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you
appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other men; I
contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that very little
superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite
in me. When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant
do my best qualities appear! My vanity would be greater if I
had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is our
relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter
of such a man."
Mr. Madison was President then. In other days her father had been on
terms of peculiar intimacy with Madison and his beautiful and
accomplished wife. Burr, in his later years, used to say that it was
he who had brought about the match which made Mrs. Madison an inmate
of the Presidential mansion.
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