expediency or earthly gain; nor did his words cease to work in New
England till the evils he opposed were finally done away.

Colonel Burr leaves the scene of our story to pursue those brilliant
and unscrupulous political intrigues so well known to the historian of
those times, and whose results were so disastrous to himself. His duel
with the ill-fated Hamilton, the awful retribution of public opinion
that followed, and the slow downward course of a doomed life are all on
record. Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of
hatred, so accursed in common esteem that even the publican who lodged
him for a night refused to accept his money when he knew his name,
heart-stricken in his domestic relations, his only daughter taken by
pirates and dying amid untold horrors,--one seems to see in a doom so
much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins
beyond those of ordinary humanity.

But we who have learned of Christ may humbly hope that these crushing
miseries in this life came not because he was a sinner above
others,--not in wrath alone,--but that the prayers of the sweet saint
who gave him to God even before his birth brought to him those friendly
adversities, that thus might be slain in his soul the evil demon of
pride, which had been the opposing force to all that was noble within
him. Nothing is more affecting than the account of the last hours of
this man, whom a woman took in and cherished in his poverty and
weakness with that same heroic enthusiasm with which it was his lot to
inspire so many women. This humble keeper of lodgings was told, that,
if she retained Aaron Burr, all her other lodgers would leave. "Let
them do it, then," she said; "but he shall remain." In the same
uncomplaining and inscrutable silence in which he had borne the
reverses and miseries of his life did this singular being pass through