Evidently Miss Hale at fourteen, and Miss Lee at thirteen, were already in society. In a few years, doubtless, they were all married to Revolutionary officers, two or three, sometimes five, of them falling in course of time to his lot, as was usual in that day of short-lived women. As we have seen, Catherine Willis--afterwards Princess Murat--married at thirteen. [Illustration: Mary Ambler.] The wife of Chief Justice Marshall, Mary Ambler, was only fourteen years old when she attended the Dunmore ball and captured the young Captain Marshall, who gave the only guinea he possessed to a clergyman for marrying him soon after. [Illustration: Chief Justice John Marshall.] Arthur Lee said, "In Virginia a man is old at thirty and a woman at twenty." A certain little Alice Lee, twelve years old, wrote this remarkable letter from Stratford in 1772 to a kinsman in London. (Doubtless Miss Alice was one of the dancers at Squire Lee's ball two years later.) "So you threaten me if I prove deficient in the deference I owe you as a married man, with the power you have of forwarding or retarding my success in the Matrimonial Way.[12] This would be a tremendous threat indeed were I as fond of Matrimony as my young Mistress, as you call her, but happily I am little more than twelve years old and not so eager to tye a Knot which Death alone can Dissolve. And yet I pretend not to ridicule the holy sacred institution, but have all due reverence for that and the worthy people who have entered into the Society, from good and generous motives. It is only those who chuse to be married at all events that I think deserve raillery.... I never saw Westmoreland so dull. I was at Squire Lee's when your letter came. He is the veriest Tramontane in nature; if ever he gets married, if his wife civilizes him, she deserves to be canonized. [12] "Lee of Virginia," Edited by Dr. Edward Jennings Lee. "So you can't forbear a fling at femalities; believe me Curiosity is as imputable to the Sons as the Daughters of Eve. Think you there was ever a Lady more curious than our Cousin the Squire? He himself is the greatest of all curiosities, but hang him, how came he to pop twice in my head while I was writing to you! "The Annapolis Races Commence the 6th of October. The American Comp^y of Players are there and said to be amazingly improved. I should like to see them, as I think Theatrical Entertainments a rational amusement." Clever little Mistress Alice! Twelve years old, and already flirting with the sixty-year-old Squire Richard Lee Burgess from Westmoreland, member of the Continental Congress, giver of five-day balls; who yet found time to gather rosebuds, for he actually married sixteen-year-old Sally Poythress after he was sixty-two years old.