However, she presented him with a most up-to-date and epicurean banquet, and had the wit and good taste to include in her dinner party such representative men as Bishop Moore, Dr. Bard and her father's good friend Dr. Hosack, the surgeon. When the party was over she wrote Burr quite enthusiastically about the Indian Chief, and declared him to have been "a most Christian and civilised guest in his manners!" There were no ladies at Theo's dinner party. She lived so much among men, and so early learned to take her place as hostess and woman that I imagine she would have had small patience with the patronage and counsel of older members of her sex. That she was extravagantly popular with men old and young is proved in many ways. Wherever she went she was a belle. Whether the male beings she met chanced to be young and stupid or old and wise, there was something for them to admire in Theo, for she was both beautiful and witty, and she had something of her father's "confidence of manner" which won adherents right and left. Mayor Livingston took her on board a frigate in the harbour one day, and warned her to leave her usual retainers behind. "Now, Theodosia," he admonished her with affectionate raillery, "you must bring none of your _sparks_ on board! They have a magazine there, and we should all be blown up!" In 1801, when she was eighteen years old, the lovely Theo married Joseph Alston, an immensely rich rice planter from South Carolina, owner of more than a thousand slaves, and at one time governor of his state. Though she went to the South to live, she never could bear to sever entirely her relations with Richmond Hill. It is a curious fact that everyone who ever lived there loved it best of all the places in the world. One year after her marriage Theo came on to New York for a visit--I suppose she stopped at her father's town house, since it was in spring, and before the country places would naturally be open. At all events it was during this visit that, fresh from her rice fields (which never agreed with her), she wrote in a letter: "... I have just returned from a ride in the country and a visit to Richmond Hill. Never did I behold this island so beautiful. The variety of vivid greens, the finely cultivated fields and gardens, the neat, cool air of the cit's boxes peeping through straight rows of tall poplars, and the elegance of some gentlemen's seats, commanding a view of the majestic Hudson, and the high, dark shores of New Jersey, altogether form a scene so lovely, so touching, and to me so new, that I was in constant rapture." In 1804 came the historic quarrel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Since this chapter is the story of Richmond Hill and not the life of Aaron Burr, I shall not concern myself with the whys or the wherefores of that disastrous affair.