When, years
after, the tale was brought to him that his daughter had been carried
off by pirates and might be still alive, he said: "No, no, no; if my
Theo had survived that storm, she would have found her way to me.
Nothing could have kept my Theo from her father."
It was these sad events, the loss of his daughter and her boy, that
severed Aaron Burr from the human race. Hope died within him. Ambition
died. He yielded to his doom, and walked among men, not melancholy,
but indifferent, reckless, and alone. With his daughter and his
grandson to live and strive for, he might have done something in his
later years to redeem his name and atone for his errors. Bereft of
these, he had not in his moral nature that which enables men who have
gone astray to repent and begin a better life.
Theodosia's death broke her husband's heart. Few letters are so
affecting as the one which he wrote to Burr when, at length, the
certainty of her loss could no longer be resisted.
"My boy--my wife--gone both! This, then, is the end of all
the hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel
severed from the human race.
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