266
char1.es cotesworth p1nckney.
theless he consented to become one of South Carolina's first Federal senators. He wrote strongly against the formation of the Society of Cincinnati, because believing it to be an aristocratic wedge. In Washington City he became a boon companion of Aaron Burr, and his humor and conviviality tinctured their social characteristics as comrades. Wine seldom affected Burr, but it made in roads into the constitution of Burke, and gave him dropsy. On one occasion, when he was being tapped, and the water was freely flowing, Burke, with his peculiar Milesian smile, observed : " Doctor, where does all this water come from? — for since I arrived at years of discretion I never drank as much." "You will be better now," said the physi cian. "I doubt it," was the reply; " for nothing in my house was ever the better after it was tapped." Burke was noted for absent-mindedness. It was the custom of the Charleston judges to leave their "owns with a middle-atied
lady who acted as janitress of the court house, who carefully hung them in her own wardrobe. Judge Burke, coming late to court one morning, hastily entered her apartment for his gown, and she being ab sent, he innocently picked up a gown of hers and hurried into court with it, and was about to don it, when stepping to the bench, he astounded associates and court room with the involuntary exclamation : " 'Fore Gad, I've got Dame Van Tuyl's Sunday petticoat! " He was said to have died with a characteristic joke upon his lips, without the ministrations of his church. William Pinkney of Maryland, before be coming one of its bar, studied medicine like Thomas Addis Emmet. His early educa tion had been sadly neglected. His adoles cence having been during the exciting period of the Revolution, accounted for his distraction from education to patriotic im pulses. But when eighteen years old, he took up severe study under the Jesuit fathers at his native Annapolis, and sub-
CHARI.ES carro1.1. of carro1.lton.
