Burr was in Philadelphia on political business, and fourteen-year-old Theo was in charge in the great house on the Hill a mile and a half from New York. Imagine any modern father leaving his little girl behind in a more or less remote country place with a small army of servants under her and full and absolute authority over them and herself! But I take it that there are not many modern little girls like Theodosia Burr. Certainly there are very few who could translate the American Constitution into French, and Theo did that while she was still a slip of a girl, merely to please her adored father! Which is a digression. In some way Burr had made the acquaintance of the celebrated Indian Chief of the Mohawks, Tha-yen-da-ne-gea. He was intelligent, educated and really a distinguished orator, and Burr took a great fancy to him. The Chief had adopted an American name,--Joseph Brant,--and had acquired quite a reputation. He was en route for Washington, but anxious to see New York before he went. So Burr sent him to Richmond Hill, and gave him a letter to present to Theo, saying that his daughter would take care of him! The letter runs: "... This will be handed to you by Colonel Brant, the celebrated Indian Chief.... He is a man of education.... Receive him with respect and hospitality. He is not one of those Indians who drink rum, but is quite a gentleman; not one who will make you fine bows, but one who understands and practises what belongs to propriety and good-breeding. He has daughters--if you could think of some little present to send to one of them (a pair of earrings for example) it would please him...." Even the prodigiously resourceful Theo was a bit taken aback by this sudden proposition. In the highly cosmopolitan circle that she was used to entertaining, she so far had encountered no savages, and, in common with most young people, she thought of "Brant" as a fierce barbarian who,--her father's letter notwithstanding,--probably carried a tomahawk and would dance a war dance in the stately hallway of Richmond Hill. In her letter to her father, written after she had met Brant and made him welcome, she admitted that she had been paramountly worried about what she ought to give him to eat. She declared that her mind was filled with wild ideas of (and she quotes): _"'The Cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders!'"_ She had, she confesses, a vague notion that all savages ate human beings, and--though this obviously was intended as a touch of grisly humour,--had half a notion to procure a human head and have it served up in state after the mediaeval fashion of serving boars' heads in Old England!