He did not think in so many words, 'I too can be a statesman. She shall see that to be wife to Joseph Alston is as important as to be daughter to Aaron Burr'. Yet some such thought was in his mind and at last conquered his native indolence. He was temperamentally unsuited to politics—domineering, tactless, and unperceptive. Moreover, now and for some years to come public speaking was torture for him. Self-consciousness swamped him, his tongue thickened into a ludicrous stutter, he tugged at his side whiskers and shuffled his feet until the audiences squirmed in unconscious imitation. Nevertheless, in this summer of 1801, when he was not yet twenty-three, he decided that neither furthering his father-in-law's career nor leading the life of a typical rice planter gave sufficient scope to a man of his abilities, and the seeds of ambition which Aaron had planted at Richmond Hill at last germinated.

On June sixteenth, the brig Enterprise, being full-laden and finding gentle southerly breezes, set sail from Adger's Wharf.

At the moment of parting from Joseph, Theo was filled with unexpected emotion. It would be many months before she saw him again. Still weak and shaky, she sat on the forward hatch with the baby in her arms and her eyes misted as she looked up at her husband.

'I'll miss you very much,' she whispered. 'Write me often, won't you?'

'Certainly.'

'You speak so coldly. You're not vexed with me, are you?'

Joseph did not reply. Around them rose the many sounds of the waterfront—the shouts of sailors, the creaking of windlasses. Next to the Enterprise a ship from the West Indies was discharging its cargo of bananas and coconuts, and the latter, escaping from their wicker baskets, rolled and bounced merrily along the wharf, while the sweating negro porters pursued them, cursing and laughing. Farther along the wharf stacked bales of sea-island cotton crowded a hundred rice tierces which awaited shipment to England. Beside the rice stood a factor in tall hat and blue frock coat arguing violently with a sea captain. The factor—invaluable middleman—attended to all business details for the planters, receiving, dispatching, and financing the plantation crops.