Guided by Aaron and his own disposition, Joseph kept his love-making to the minimum, for he knew no middle ground. There was passion, and there was the restrained affection with which one treated one's affianced wife. Moreover, any such regrettable loss of control as that which had overpowered him on her birthday must never be repeated. After marriage, of course, the situation would automatically change. Some combination of the two states of feeling would then appear, and he looked forward to this eagerly. However, he was a languid young man and suffering just now from a mild attack of the fever which periodically afflicted all tidewater Carolinians, and most of his energies were engaged by Aaron.

Joseph and Aaron were closeted in the library every day until dinner-time. The latter spared no pains in grooming his prospective son-in-law for his new political rôle. He initiated him into the intricacies of preferment, persuasion, and promises; he taught him one of his private ciphers and dazzled him with an atmosphere of high drama. He also borrowed money from him, but in such a charming and complimentary way that Joseph felt himself privileged to be allowed to contribute. In other ways Aaron found Joseph more useful than he had dared hope. The young man showed an unexpected talent for letter-writing. He was as verbose and expansive on paper as he was inarticulate of speech.

Aaron, whose own style was always brief and pithy, tactfully pruned many of the classical allusions and involved flights of rhetoric, but he kept Joseph writing letters to the South. Letters to influential families extolling Colonel Burr's aptitudes. These would bear fruit in the elections.

Theodosia, during those hours in the library, was left to her own devices except for the tasks which she must perform. Aaron expected summaries of every book she read, so many lines of Terence daily, a page of Corneille to be translated into 'graceful English.'

'Better to lose your head than your habits of study,' he told her, and found time himself to supervise her work.

After the three-o'clock dinner came the time for gaiety, and there were many pleasures. Turtle feasts on the rocks by Turtle Bay in the East River, with the succulent green meat roasted in seaweed fires. Long excursions on horseback to the Marriner's Tavern north of Harlem, a beautiful old house which had sheltered Washington, but was now in eclipse, not yet bought and rejuvenated by Stephen Jumel and his lovely and disreputable wife, Eliza. There were private parties, soirées, routs, and balls, and there were theatrical performances played by a secondary company until the regular season should start.