"I beg, Miss Prissy," he wrote to her from Philadelphia during the same year, "that you will name a single '_unsuccessful effort_' which you have made to please me. As to the letters and journal which you did write, surely you have reason abundant to believe that they gave me pleasure; and how the deuce I am to be pleased with those you _did not_ write, and how an omission to write can be called an effort, remains for your ingenuity to disclose." In his next letter to her, he referred again to "the unsuccessful effort." "Your letter of the 9th, my dear Theo, was a most agreeable surprise to me. I had not dared even to hope for one until to-morrow. In one instance, at least, an attempt to please me has not been '_unsuccessful_.' You see, I do not forget that piece of impudence." He was mindful, too, of her health, and in one of his letters begged her to carry herself erect. He had himself a remarkably erect and graceful carriage, which lent a majesty to his bearing and gave the impression of much greater height than he possessed. While his letters to her were full of advice and suggestions for her improvement, they were by no means lacking in commendation. As she grew to womanhood this was more marked, as was also his tendency to confide in her. Her father's frequent and prolonged absences from home, her mother's long illness, attended with much suffering and terminating in death when Theodosia was but eleven years old, had necessitated an early assumption of those responsibilities which mature and strengthen character. To a suggestion contained in a letter written by her father shortly before her mother's death, that he would leave Congress that he might have more time to devote to his wife, Theodosia replied with a quaintness that was characteristic of her: "Ma begs that you omit the thought of leaving Congress." From her close association with her mother under such circumstances her receptive mind became imbued with the beauties of the Christian philosophy, which her father, though a grandson of Jonathan Edwards and a son of the Rev. Aaron Burr, founder and first president of Princeton College, had not included in the course of studies so exactingly marked out for her. She was at this time studying Latin, Greek, French, and music, and learning to dance and to skate. After her mother's death, Burr, who had a profound admiration for the language, literature, and people of France, consigned her to a French governess. She acquired a complete mastery of that tongue, and the fluency with which she spoke it added much to the grace with which she presided over her father's home, for Burr frequently entertained Frenchmen. Louis Philippe, Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and Volney were all at various times his guests at Richmond Hill.