BOOK II

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

HIS YOUTH IN THE WEST INDIES AND IN THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA

I

I should have been glad to find an old Almanac of Nevis which contained a description of its 11th of January, 1757. But one January is much like another in the Leeward Islands, and he who has been there can easily imagine the day on which Alexander Hamilton was born. The sky was a deeper blue than in summer, for the sun was resting after the terrific labours of Autumn, and there was a prick in the trade winds which stimulated the blood by day and chilled it a trifle at night. The slave women moved more briskly, followed by a trotting brood of "pic'nees," one or more clinging to their hips, all bewailing the rigours of winter. Down in the river where they pounded the clothes on the stones, they vowed they would carry the next linen to the sulphur springs, for the very marrow in their bones was cold. In the Great Houses there were no fires, but doors and windows were closed early and opened late, and blankets were on every bed. The thermometer may have stood at 72°.

Nevis herself was like a green jewel casket, after the autumn rains. Oranges and sweet limes were yellow in her orchards, the long-leaved banana trees were swelling with bunches of fruit, the guavas were ready for cream and the boiling. The wine was in the cocoanut, the royal palms had shed their faded summer leaves and glittered like burnished metal. The gorgeous masses of the croton bush had drawn fresh colour from the rain. In the woods and in the long avenues which wound up the mountain to the Great House of every estate, the air was almost cold; but out under the ten o'clock sun, even a West Indian could keep warm, and the negroes sang as they reaped the cane. The sea near the shore was like green sunlight, but some yards out it deepened into that intense hot blue which is the final excess of West Indian colouring. The spray flew high over the reef between Nevis and St. Kitts, glittering like the salt ponds on the desolate end of the larger island, the roar of the breakers audible in the room where the child who was to be called Alexander Hamilton was born.

Rachael rose to a ceaseless demand upon her attention for which she was grateful during the long days of Hamilton's absence. Alexander turned out to be the most restless and monarchical of youngsters and preferred his mother to his black attendants. She ruled him with a firm hand, however, for she had no mind to lessen her pleasure in him, and although she could not keep him quiet, she prevented the blacks from spoiling him.

During the hurricane months Hamilton yielded to her nervous fears, as he had done in the preceding year, and crossed to St. Kitts but seldom. As a matter of fact, hurricanes of the first degree, are rare in the West Indies, the average to each island being one in a century. But from the 25th of August, when all the Caribbean world prostrates itself in church while prayers for deliverance from the awful visitation are read, to the 25th of October, when the grateful or the survivors join in thanksgiving, every wind alarms the nervous, and every round woolly cloud must contain the white squall. Rachael knew that Nevis boats had turned over when minor squalls dashed down the Narrows between the extreme points of the Islands, and that they were most to be dreaded in the hurricane season. Hamilton's inclination was to spare in every possible way the woman who had sacrificed so much for him, and he asked little urging to idle his days in the cool library with his charming wife and son. Therefore his business suffered, for his partners took advantage of his negligence; and the decay of their fortunes began when Rachael, despite the angry protests of Archibald Hamn, sold her property on St. Kitts and gave Hamilton the money. He withdrew from the firm which had treated him inconsiderately, and set up a business for himself. For a few years he was hopeful, although more than once obliged to borrow money from his wife. She gave freely, for she had been brought up in the careless plenty of the Islands. Mary Fawcett, admirable manager as she was, had been lavish with money, particularly when her favourite child was in question; and Rachael's imagination had never worked toward the fact that money could roll down hill and not roll up again. She was long in discovering that the man she loved and admired was a failure in the uninteresting world of business. He was a brilliant and charming companion, read in the best literatures of the world, a thoughtful and adoring husband. It availed Archibald Hamn nothing to rage or Dr. Hamilton to remonstrate. Rachael gradually learned that Hamilton was not as strong as herself, but the maternal instinct, so fully aroused by her child, impelled her to fill out his nature with hers, while denying nothing to the man who did all he could to make her happy.

In the third year Hamilton gave up his sail-boat, and had himself rowed across the Narrows, where the overlooker of a salt estate he had bought awaited him with a horse. Once he would have thought nothing of walking the eight miles to Basseterre, but the Tropics, while they sharpen the nerves, caress unceasingly the indolence of man. During the hurricane season he crossed as often as he thought necessary, for with expert oarsmen there was little danger, even from squalls, and the distance was quickly covered.

Gradually Rachael's position was accepted. Nothing could alter the fact that she was the daughter of Dr. and Mary Fawcett, and Hamilton was of the best blood in the Kingdom. She was spoken of generally as Mistress Hamilton, and old friends of her parents began to greet her pleasantly as she drove about the Island with her beautiful child. In time they called, and from that it was but another step to invite, as a matter of course, the young Hamiltons to their entertainments. After all, Rachael was not the first woman in tropical Great Britain to love a man she could not marry, and it was fatiguing to ask the everlasting question of whether the honesty of a public irregular alliance were not counterbalanced by its dangerous example. It was a day of loose morals, the first fruit of the vast scientific movement of the century, whose last was the French Revolution. Moreover, the James Hamiltons were delightful people, and life on the Islands was a trifle monotonous at times; they brought into Nevis society fresh and unusual personalities, spiced with a salient variety. Hamilton might almost be said to have been born an astute man of the world. He opened his doors with an accomplished hospitality to the most intelligent and cultivated people of the Island, ignoring those who based their social pretensions on rank and wealth alone. In consequence he and his wife became the leaders of a small and exclusive set, who appreciated their good fortune. Dr. Hamilton and a few other Kittifonians were constant visitors in this hospitable mansion. Christiana Huggins, who had taken a bold stand from the first, carried her father there one day in triumph, and that austere parent laid down his arms. All seemed well, and the crumbling of the foundations made no sound.

And Alexander? He was an excitable and ingenious imp, who saved himself from many a spanking by his sparkling mind and entrancing sweetness of temper. He might fly at his little slaves and beat them, and to his white playmates he never yielded a point; but they loved him, for he was generous and honest, and the happiest little mortal on the Island. He could get into as towering a rage as old John Fawcett, but he was immediately amenable to the tenderness of his parents.

When he was four years old he was sent to a small school, which happened to be kept by a Jewess. In spite of his precocity his parents had no wish to force a mind which, although delightful to them in its saucy quickness, aroused no ambitious hopes; they sent him to school merely that there might be less opportunity to spoil him at home. His new experience was of a brief duration.

Hamilton on a Sunday was reading to Rachael in the library. Alexander shoved a chair to the table and climbed with some difficulty, for he was very small, to an elevated position among the last reviews of Europe. He demanded the attention of his parents, and, clasping his hands behind his back, began to recite rapidly in an unknown tongue. The day was very hot, and he wore nothing but a white apron. His little pink feet were bare on the mahogany, and his fair curls fell over a flushed and earnest face, which at all times was too thin and alert to be angelic or cherubic. Hamilton and Rachael, wondering whom he fancied himself imitating, preserved for a moment a respectful silence, then, overcome by his solemn countenance and the fluency of his outlandish utterance, burst into one of those peals of sudden laughter which seem to strike the most sensitive chord in young children. Alexander shrieked in wrath and terror, and made as if to fling himself on his mother's bosom, then planted his feet with an air of stubborn defiance, and went on with his recital. Hamilton listened a moment longer, then left the house abruptly. He returned in wrath.

"That woman has taught him the Decalogue in Hebrew!" he exclaimed. "'Tis a wonder his brains are not addled. He will sail boats in the swimming-bath and make shell houses in the garden for the next three years. We'll have no more of school."

II

Alexander Hamilton had several escapes from imminent peril when he was a boy, and the first occurred in the month of December, 1761. Hamilton had gone to St. Croix on business, and Rachael and the child spent the fortnight of his absence with Christiana Huggins. Rachael was accustomed to Hamilton's absences, but Nevis was in a very unhealthy condition, through lack of wind and rains during the preceding autumn. The sea had looked like a metal floor for months, the Island was parched and dry, the swamps on the lowlands were pestiferous. Many negroes had died in Charles Town, and many more were ill. The obeah doctors, with their absurd concoctions and practices, were openly defying the physicians of repute, for the terrified blacks believed that the English had prayed once too often that the hurricane should be stayed, and that he sulked where none might feel his faintest breath. Therefore they cursed the white doctor as futile, and flung his physic from the windows.

Rachael was glad to escape to the heights with Alexander. There it was almost as cool as it should be in December, and she could watch for her husband's sloop. He had gone with the first light wind, and there was enough to bring him home, although with heavy sail. She forgot the muttering negroes and the sickness below. Her servants had been instructed to nurse and nourish where assistance was needed, and up here there was nothing to do but wander with her friend and child through the gay beauty of the terraced garden, or climb the stone steps to the cold quiet depths of the forest.

At the end of a fortnight there was no sign of her husband's sloop, but the wind was strengthening, and she decided to return home and make ready for him. During the long drive she passed negroes in large numbers, either walking toward Charles Town or standing in muttering groups by the roadside. At one time the driveway was so thick with them that her coach could not pass until the postilion laid about him with his whip.

"This is very odd," she said to her nurse. "I have never seen anything like this before."

"Me no t'ink he nothin'. All go tee tick--oh, dis pic'nee no keep till one minit. Me no t'ink about he'n de road."

She lifted the child between her face and her mistress's eyes, and Rachael saw that her hand trembled. "Can the negroes be rising?" she wondered; and for a moment she was faint with terror, and prayed for Hamilton's return.

But she was heroic by nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles Town on an errand, then went directly to her bedroom, which was disconnected from the other rooms, and called her three devoted maids, Rebecca, Flora, and Esther. They came running at the sound of her voice, and she saw at once that they were terrified and ready to cling to her garments.

"What is the matter?" she demanded. "Tell me at once."

"Me no know fo' sure," said Rebecca, "but me t'ink, t'ink, till me yell in me tleep. Somethin' ter'ble go to happen. Me feel he in de air. All de daddys, all de buddys, 'peak, 'peak, togedder all de time, an' look so bad--an' de oby doctors put de curse ebberywheres. Me fine befo' de gate dis mornin' one pudden', de mud an' oil an' horsehair, but me no touch he. Me ask all de sissys me know, what comes, but he no 'peak. He run out he tongue, and once he smack me ear. Oh, Mistress, take us back to Sinkitts."

"But do you _know_ nothing?"

They shook their heads, but stared at her hopefully, for they believed implicitly in her power to adjust all things.

"And my other slaves? Do you think they are faithful to me?"

"All in de town all de time. Me ask ebbery he tell me what comes, and he say 'nothin,' but I no believe he."

"And has the Governor taken no notice?"

"De Gobbenor lord and all de noble Buckras go yis'day to Sinkitts. Take de militia for one gran' parade in Bassetarr. Is de birfday to-morrow de Gobbenor lord de Sinkitts. Up in de Great Houses no hear nothin', an' all quiet on 'states till yes'day. Now comin' to town an' look so bad, so bad!"

"Very well, then, the Governor and the militia must come back. Rebecca, you are the most sensible as well as the weakest in the arms. You will stay here to-night, and you will not falter for a moment. As soon as it is dark Flora and Esther will row me across the channel, and I will send the Buckra's agent on a fast horse with a note to the Governor. If the other house servants return, you will tell them that I am ill and that Flora and Esther are nursing me. You will lock the gates, and open them to no one unless your Buckra should return. Do you understand?"

The slave rolled her eyes, but nodded. She might have defied the Captain-General, but not one of the Fawcetts.

There were two hours before dark. Rachael was conscious of every nerve in her body, and paced up and down the long line of rooms which terminated in the library, until Alexander's legs were worn out trotting after her, and he fell asleep on the floor. Twice she went to the roof to look for Hamilton's sloop, but saw not a sail on the sea; and the streets of Charles Town were packed with negroes. England sent no soldiers to protect her Islands, and every free male between boyhood and old age was forced by law to join the militia. It was doubtful if there were a dozen muscular white men on Nevis that night, for the birthday of a Governor was a fête of hilarities. Unless the militia returned that night, the blacks, if they really were plotting vengeance, and she knew their superstitions, would have burned every house and cane-field before morning.

The brief twilight passed. The mist rolled down from the heights of Nevis. Rachael, with Alexander in her arms, and followed by her maids, stole along the shore through the thick cocoanut groves, meeting no one. They were far from the town's centre, and all the blacks on the Island seemed to be gathered there. The boat was beached, and it took the combined efforts of the three women to launch it. When they pushed off, the roar of the breakers and the heavy mist covered their flight. But there was another danger, and the very physical strength of the slaves departed before it. They had rowed their mistress about the roadstead before St. Kitts a hundred times, but the close proximity of the reef so terrified them that Rachael was obliged to take the oars; while Flora caught Alexander in so convulsive an embrace that he awoke and protested with all the vigour of his lungs. His mother's voice, to which he was peculiarly susceptible, hushed him, and he held back his own, although the gasping bosom on which he rested did not tend to soothe a nervous child. But there were other ways of expressing outraged feelings, and he kicked like a little steer.

Rachael herself was not too sure of her knowledge of the dangerous channel, although she had crossed it many times with Hamilton; and the mist was floating across to St. Kitts. The hollow boom of the reef seemed so close that she expected to hear teeth in the boat every moment, and she knew that far and wide the narrows bristled. She wondered if her hair were turning white, and her straining nerves quivered for a moment with a feminine regret; for she knew the power of her beauty over Hamilton. But her arms kept their strength. Life had taught her to endure more than a half-hour of mortal anxiety.

She reached the shore in safety, and Esther recovered her muscle and agreed to run to the overlooker's house and send him, on his fleetest horse, with her mistress's note to the Governor of Nevis. When the others reached the house, a mile from the Narrows, the man had gone; and Rachael could do no more. The overlookers wife mulled wine, and the maids were soon asleep. Alexander refused to go to bed, and Rachael, who was not in a disciplinary mood, led him out into the open to watch for the boats of the Governor and his militia. There was no moon; they could cross and land near Hamilton's house and overpower, without discharging a gun, the negroes packed in Charles Town. If the Governor were prompt, the blacks, even had they dispersed to fire the estates, would not have time for havoc; and she knew the tendency of the negro to procrastinate. They did not expect the Governor until late on the following day; they could drink all night and light their torches at dawn when Nevis was heavy in her last sleep. Nevertheless, Rachael watched the Island anxiously.

Fortunately, Alexander possessed an inquiring mind, and she was obliged to answer so many questions that the strain was relieved. They walked amidst a wild and dismal scene. The hills were sterile and black. The salt ponds, sunken far below the level of the sea, from lack of rain, glittered white, but they were set with aloes and manchineel, and there were low and muddy flats to be avoided. It was a new aspect of nature to the child who had lived his four years amid the gay luxuriance of tropic verdure, and he was mightily interested. Nevertheless, it was a long hour before the overlooker returned with word that the Governor was on his way to Nevis with the militia of both Islands--for St. Kitts was quiet, its negroes having taken the drouth philosophically--and that her husband was with them. He had arrived at Basseterre as the boats were leaving; as a member of the Governor's staff, he had no choice. He had sent her word, however, not to return to Nevis that night; and Rachael and Alexander went down to the extreme point of the Island and sat there through a cold night of bitter anxiety. With the dawn Hamilton came for them.

The negroes, surprised and overwhelmed, had surrendered without resistance, and before they had left the town. They confessed that their intention had been to murder every white on the Island, seize the ammunition which was stored on the estates, and fire upon the militia as it passed, on the following day. The ringleaders and obeah doctors were either publicly executed or punished with such cruelty that the other malcontents were too cowed to plan another rebellion; and the abundant rains of the following autumn restored their faith in the white man.

III

When Alexander was five years old, James arrived, an object of much interest to his elder brother, but a child of ordinary parts to most beholders. He came during the last days of domestic tranquillity; for it was but a few weeks later that Hamilton was obliged to announce to Rachael that his fortunes, long tottering, had collapsed to their rotten foundations. It was some time before she could accommodate her understanding to the fact that there was nothing left, for even Levine had not dared to lose his money, far less her own; and had she ever given the subject of wealth a thought, she would have assumed that it had roots in certain families which no adverse circumstance could deplace. She had overheard high words between Archibald Hamn and her husband in the library, but Hamilton's casual explanations had satisfied her, and she had always disliked Archibald as a possible stepfather. Dr. Hamilton had frequently looked grave after a conversation with his kinsman, but Rachael was too unpractical to attribute his heavier moods to anything but his advancing years.

When Hamilton made her understand that they were penniless, and that his only means of supporting her was to accept an offer from Peter Lytton to take charge of a cattle estate on St. Croix, Rachael's controlling sensation was dismay that this man whom she had idolized and idealized, who was the forgiven cause of her remarkable son's illegitimacy, was a failure in his competition with other men. Money would come somehow, it always had; but Hamilton dethroned, shoved out of the ranks of planters and merchants, reduced to the status of one of his own overlookers, almost was a new and strange being, and she dared not bid forth her hiding thoughts.

Fortunately the details of moving made life impersonal and commonplace. The three slaves whose future had been the last concern but one of Mary Fawcett, were sent, wailing, to Archibald Hamn. Two of the others were retained to wait upon the children, the rest sold with the old mahogany furniture and the library. The Hamiltons set sail for St. Croix on a day in late April. The sympathy of their friends had been expressed in more than one offer of a lucrative position, but Hamilton was intensely proud, and too mortified at his failure to remain obscure among a people who had been delighted to accept his princely and exclusive hospitality. On St. Croix he was almost unknown.

They made the voyage in thirty-two hours, but as the slaves were ill, after the invariable habit of their colour, Rachael had little respite from her baby, or Hamilton from Alexander, whose restless legs and enterprising mind kept him in constant motion; and the day began at five o'clock. There was no opportunity for conversation, and Hamilton was grateful to the miserable mustees. He had the tact to let his wife readjust herself to her damaged idols without weak excuses and a pleading which would have distressed her further, but he was glad to be spared intimate conversation with her.

As they sailed into the bright green waters before Frederikstadt, the sun blazed down upon the white town on the white plain with a vicious energy which Rachael had never seen on Nevis during the hottest and most silent months of the year. She closed her eyes and longed for the cool shallows of the harbour, and even Alexander ceased to watch the flying fish dart like silver blades over the water, and was glad to be stowed comfortably into one of the little deck-houses. As for the slaves, weakened by illness, they wept and refused to gather themselves together.

But Rachael's soul, which had felt faint for many days, rose triumphant in the face of this last affliction. Like all West Indians, she hated extreme heat, and during those months on her own Islands when the trades hibernated, rarely left the house. She remembered little of St. Croix. Her imagination had disassociated itself from all connected with it, but now it burst into hideous activity and pictured interminable years of scorching heat and blinding glare. For a moment she descended to the verge of hysteria, from which she struggled with so mighty an effort that it vitalized her spirit for the ordeal of her new life; and when Hamilton, cursing himself, came to assist her to land, she was able to remark that she recalled the beauty of Christianstadt, and to anathematize her sea-green maids.

The trail of Spain is over all the islands, and on St. Croix has left its picturesque mark in the heavy arcades which front the houses in the towns. Behind these arcades one can pass from street to street with brief egress into the awful downpour of the sun, and they give to both towns an effect of architectural beauty. At that time palms and cocoanuts grew in profusion along the streets of Frederikstadt and in the gardens, tempering the glare of the sun on the coral.

Peter Lytton's coach awaited the Hamiltons, and at six o'clock they started for their new home. The long driveway across the Island was set with royal palms, beyond which rolled vast fields of cane. St. Croix was approaching the height of her prosperity, and almost every inch of her fertile acres was under cultivation. They rolled up and over every hill, the heavy stone houses, with their negro hamlets and mills, rising like half-submerged islands, unless they crowned a height. The roads swarmed with Africans, who bowed profoundly to the strangers in the fine coach, grinning an amiable welcome. Surrounded by so generous a suggestion of hospitality and plenty, with the sun low in the west, the spirits of the travellers rose, and Rachael thought with more composure upon the morrow's encounter with her elder sisters. She knew them very slightly, their husbands less. When her connection with Hamilton began, correspondence between them had ceased; but like others they had accepted the relation, and for the last three years Hamilton had been a welcome guest at their houses when business took him to St. Croix. Mrs. Lytton had been the first to whom he had confided his impending failure, and she, remembering her mother's last letter and profoundly pitying the young sister who seemed marked for misfortune, had persuaded her husband to offer Hamilton the management of his grazing estates on the eastern end of the Island. She wrote to Rachael, assuring her of welcome, and reminding her that her story was unknown on St. Croix, that she would be accepted without question as Hamilton's wife and their sister. But Rachael knew that the truth would come out as soon as they had attracted the attention of their neighbours, and she had seen enough of the world to be sure that what people tolerated in the wealthy they censured in the unimportant. To depend upon her sisters' protection instead of her own lifelong distinction, galled her proud spirit. For the first time she understood how powerless Hamilton was to protect her. The glamour of that first year when nothing mattered was gone for ever. She had two children, one of them uncommon, and they were to encounter life without name or property. True, Levine might die, or Hamilton make some brilliant coup, but she felt little of the buoyancy of hope as they left the cane-fields and drove among the dark hills to their new home.

The house and outbuildings were on a high eminence, surrounded on three sides by hills. Below was a lagoon, which was separated from the sea by a deep interval of tidal mud set thick with mangroves. The outlet through this swamp was so narrow that a shark which had found its way in when young had grown too large to return whence he came, and was the solitary and discontented inhabitant of the lagoon. The next morning Rachael, rising early and walking on the terrace with Alexander, was horrified to observe him warming his white belly in the sun. On three sides of the lagoon was a thick grove of manchineels, hung with their deadly apples; here and there a palm, which drooped as if in discord with its neighbours. It was an uncheerful place for a woman with terror and tumult in her soul, but the house was large and had been made comfortable by her brother-in-laws' slaves.

Mrs. Lytton and Mrs. Mitchell drove over for the eleven o'clock breakfast. They were very kind, but they were many years older than the youngest of their family, proudly conscious of their virtue, uncomprehending of the emotions which had nearly wrenched Rachael's soul from her body more than once. Moreover, Mrs. Mitchell was the physical image of Mary Fawcett without the inheritance of so much as the old lady's temper; and there were moments, as she sat chattering amiably with Alexander, with whom she immediately fell in love, when Rachael could have flown at and throttled her because she was not her mother. Mrs. Lytton was delicate and nervous, but more reserved, and Rachael liked her better. Nevertheless, she was heartily glad to be rid of both of them, and reflected with satisfaction that she was to live on the most isolated part of the Island. She had begged them to ask no one to call, and for months she saw little of anybody except her family.

Her household duties were many, and she was forced at once to alter her lifelong relation to domestic economics. Hamilton's salary was six hundred pieces of eight, and for a time the keeping of accounts and the plans for daily disposal of the small income furnished almost the only subjects of conversation between her husband and herself. His duties kept him on horseback during all but the intolerable hours of the day, and until their new life had become a commonplace they were fortunate in seeing little of each other.

Alexander long since had upset his father's purpose to defer the opening of his mind until the age of seven. He had taught himself the rudiments of education by such ceaseless questioning of both his parents that they were glad to set him a daily task and keep him at it as long as possible. In this new home he had few resources besides his little books and his mother, who gave him all her leisure. There were no white playmates, and he was not allowed to go near the lagoon, lest the shark get him or he eat of forbidden fruit. Just after his sixth birthday, however, several changes occurred in his life: Peter Lytton sent him a pony, his father killed the shark and gave him a boat, and he made the acquaintance of the Rev. Hugh Knox.

This man, who was to play so important a part in the life of Alexander Hamilton, was himself a personality. At this time but little over thirty, he had, some years since, come to the West Indies with a classical library and a determination to rescue the planters from that hell which awaits those who drowse through life in a clime where it is always summer when it is not simply and blazingly West Indian. He soon threw the mantle of charity over the patient planters, and became the boon companion of many; but he made converts and was mightily proud of them. His was the zeal of the converted. When he arrived in the United States, in 1753, young, fresh from college, enthusiastic, and handsome, he found favour at once in the eyes of the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Middletown on the Delaware, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction. Through the influence of this eminent divine, he obtained a school and many friends. The big witty Irishman was a welcome guest at the popular tavern, and was not long establishing himself as the leader of its hilarities. He was a peculiarly good mimic, and on Saturday nights his boon companions fell into the habit of demanding his impersonation of some character locally famous. One night he essayed a reproduction of Dr. Rogers, then one of the most celebrated men of his cloth. Knox rehearsed the sermon of the previous Sunday, not only with all the divine's peculiarity of gesture and inflection, but almost word for word; for his memory was remarkable. At the start his listeners applauded violently, then subsided into the respectful silence they were wont to accord Dr. Rogers; at the finish they stole out without a word. As for Knox, he sat alone, overwhelmed with the powerful sermon he had repeated, and by remorse for his own attempted levity. His emotional Celtic nature was deeply impressed. A few days later he disappeared, and was not heard of again until, some months after, Dr. Rogers learned that he was the guest of the Rev. Aaron Burr at Newark, and studying for the church. He was ordained in due course, converted his old companions, then set sail for St. Croix.

Hamilton met him at Peter Lytton's, talked with him the day through, and carried him home to dinner. After that he became little less than an inmate of the household; a room was furnished for him, and when he did not occupy it, he rode over several times a week. His books littered every table and shelf.

Alexander was his idol, and he was the first to see that the boy was something more than brilliant. Hamilton had accepted his son's cleverness as a matter of course, and Rachael, having a keen contempt for fatuous mothers, hardly had dared admit to herself that her son was to other boys as a star to pebbles. When Knox, who had undertaken his education at once, assured her that he must distinguish himself if he lived, probably in letters, life felt almost fresh again, although she regretted his handicap the more bitterly. As for Knox, his patience was inexhaustible. Alexander would have everything resolved into its elements, and was merciless in his demand for information, no matter what the thermometer. He had no playmates until he was nine, and by that time he had much else to sober him. Of the ordinary pleasures of childhood he had scant knowledge.

Rachael wondered at the invariable sunniness of his nature,--save when he flew into a rage,--for under the buoyancy of her own had always been a certain melancholy. Before his birth she had gone to the extremes of happiness and grief, her normal relation to life almost forgotten. But the sharpened nerves of the child manifested themselves in acute sensibilities and an extraordinary precocity of intellect, never in morbid or irritable moods. He was excitable, and had a high and sometimes furious temper, but even his habit of study never extinguished his gay and lively spirits. On the other hand, beneath the surface sparkle of his mind was a British ruggedness and tenacity, and a stubborn oneness of purpose, whatever might be the object, with which no lighter mood interfered. All this Rachael lived long enough to discover and find compensation in, and as she mastered the duties of her new life she companioned the boy more and more. James was a good but uninteresting baby, who made few demands upon her, and was satisfied with his nurse. She never pretended to herself that she loved him as she did Alexander, for aside from the personality of her first-born, he was the symbol and manifest of her deepest living.

Although Rachael was monotonously conscious of the iron that had impaled her soul, she was not quite unhappy at this time, and she never ceased to love Hamilton. Whatever his lacks and failures, nothing could destroy his fascination as a man. His love for her, although tranquillized by time, was still strong enough to keep alive his desire' to please her, and he thought of her as his wife always. He felt the change in her, and his soul rebelled bitterly at the destruction of his pedestal and halo, and all that fiction had meant to both of them; but he respected her reserve, and the subject never came up between them. He knew that she never would love any one else, that she still loved him passionately, despite the shattered ideal of him; and he consoled himself with the reflection that even in giving him less than her entire store, she gave him, merely by being herself, more than he had thought to find in any woman. His courteous attentions to her had never relaxed, and in time the old companionship was resumed; they read and discussed as in their other home; but this their little circle was widened by two, Alexander and Hugh Knox. The uninterrupted intimacy of their first years was not to be resumed.

They saw little of the society of St. Croix. In 1763 Christiana Huggins, visiting the Peter Lyttons, married her host's brother, James, and settled on the Island. She drove occasionally to the lonely estate in the east, but she had a succession of children and little time for old duties. Rachael exchanged calls at long intervals with her sisters and their intimate friends, the Yards, Lillies, Crugers, Stevens, Langs, and Goodchilds, but she had been too great a lady to strive now for social position, practically dependent as she was on the charity of her relatives.

IV

In the third year of their life on St. Croix, Rachael discovered that Peter Lytton was dissatisfied with Hamilton, and retained him to his own detriment, out of sympathy for herself and her children. From that time she had few tranquil moments. It was as if, like the timid in the hurricane season, she sat constantly with ears strained for that first loud roar in the east. She realized then that the sort of upheaval which shatters one's economic life is but the precursor of other upheavals, and she thought on the unknown future until her strong soul was faint again.

Hamilton was one of those men whose gifts are ruined by their impulses, in whom the cultivation of sober judgement is interrupted by the excesses of a too sanguine temperament. He was honourable, and always willing to admit his mistakes, but years and repeated failure did little toward balancing his faults and virtues. In time he wore out the patience of even those who loved and admired him. His wife remained his one loyal and unswerving friend, but her part in his life was near its finish. The day came when Peter Lytton, exasperated once too often, after an ill-considered sale of valuable stock, let fly his temper, and further acceptance of his favour was out of the question. Hamilton, after a scene with his wife, in which his agony and remorse quickened all the finest passions in her own nature, sailed for the Island of St. Vincent, in the hope of finding employment with one of his former business connections. He had no choice but to leave his wife and children dependent upon her relatives until he could send for them; and a week later Rachael was forced to move to Peter Lytton's.

Her brother-in-law's house was very large. She was given an upstairs wing of it and treated with much consideration, but this final ignominy broke her haughty spirit, and she lost interest in herself. She was thankful that her children were not to grow up in want, that Alexander was able to continue his studies with Hugh Knox. He was beyond her now in everything but French, in which they read and talked together daily. She also discussed constantly with him those heroes of history distinguished not only for great achievements, but for sternest honour. She dreamed of his future greatness, and sometimes of her part in it. But her inner life was swathed like a mummy.

To Alexander the change would have been welcome had he understood his mother less. But the ordinary bright boy of nine is acute and observing, and this boy of Rachael's, with his extraordinary intuitions, his unboyish brain, his sympathetic and profound affection for his mother, felt with her and criticised his father severely. To him failure was incomprehensible, then, as later, for self-confidence and indomitability were parts of his equipment; and that a man of his father's age and experience, to say nothing of his education and intellect, should so fail in the common relation of life, and break the heart and pride of the uncommonest of women, filled him with a deep disappointment, which, no doubt, was the first step toward the early loss of certain illusions.

Otherwise his life was vastly improved. He soon became intimate with boys of neighbouring estates, Edward and Thomas Stevens, and Benjamin Yard, and for a time they all studied together under Hugh Knox. At first there was discord, for Alexander would have led a host of cherubims or had naught to do with them, and these boys were clever and spirited. There were rights of word and fist in the lee of Mr. Lytton's barn, where interference was unlikely; but the three succumbed speedily, not alone to the powerful magnetism in little Hamilton's mind, and to his active fists, but because he invariably excited passionate attachment, unless he encountered jealous hate. When his popularity with these boys was established they adored the very blaze of his temper, and when he formed them into a soldier company and marched them up and down the palm avenue for a morning at a time, they never murmured, although they were like to die of the heat and unaccustomed exertion. Neddy Stevens, who resembled him somewhat in face, was the closest of these boyhood friends.

Alexander was a great favourite with Mr. Lytton, who took him to ride every morning; Mrs. Lytton preferred James, who was a comfortable child to nurse; but Mrs. Mitchell was the declared slave of her lively nephew, and sent her coach for him on Saturday mornings. As for Hugh Knox, he never ceased to whittle at the boy's ambition and point it toward a great place in modern letters. Had he been born with less sound sense and a less watchful mother, it is appalling to think what a brat he would have been; but as it was, the spoiling but fostered a self-confidence which was half the battle in after years.

Hamilton never returned. His letters to his wife spoke always of the happiness of their final reunion, of belief in the future. His brothers had sent him money, and he hoped they would help him to recover his fortunes. But two years passed and he was still existing on a small salary, his hopes and his impassioned tenderness were stereotyped. Rachael's experience with Hamilton had developed her insight. She knew that man requires woman to look after her own fuel. If she cannot, he may carry through life the perfume of a sentiment, and a tender regret, but it grows easy and more easy to live without her. It was a long while before she forced her penetrating vision round to the certainty that she never should see Hamilton again, and then she realized how strong hope had been, that her interest in herself was not dead, that her love must remain quick through interminable years of monotony and humiliation. For a time she was so alive that she went close to killing herself, but she fought it out as she had fought through other desperate crises, and wrenched herself free of her youth, to live for the time when her son's genius should lift him so high among the immortals that his birth would matter as little as her own hours of agony. But the strength that carried her triumphantly through that battle was fed by the last of her vitality, and it was not long before she knew that she must die.

Alexander knew it first. The change in his mother was so sudden, the earthen hue of her white skin, the dimming of her splendid eyes, spoke so unmistakably of some strange collapse of the vital forces, that it seemed to the boy who worshipped her as if all the noises of the Universe were shrieking his anguish. At the same time he fought for an impassive exterior, then bolted from the house and rode across the Island for a doctor. The man came, prescribed for a megrim, and Alexander did not call him again; nor did he mention his mother's condition to the rest of the family. She was in the habit of remaining in her rooms for weeks at a time, and she had her own attendants. Mrs. Lytton was an invalid, and Peter Lytton, while ready to give of his bounty to his wife's sister, had too little in common with Rachael to seek her companionship. Alexander felt the presence of death too surely to hope, and was determined to have his mother to himself during the time that remained. He confided in Hugh Knox, then barely left the apartments.

Just before her collapse Rachael was still a beautiful woman. She was only thirty-two when she died. Her face, except when she forced her brain to activity, was sad and worn, but the mobile beauty of the features was unimpaired, and her eyes were luminous, even at their darkest. Her head was always proudly erect, and nature had given her a grace and a dash which survived broken fortunes and the death of her coquetry. No doubt this is the impression of her which Alexander carried through life, for those last two months passed to the sound of falling ruins, on which he was too sensible to dwell when they had gone into the control of his will.

After she had admitted to Alexander that she understood her condition, they seldom alluded to the subject, although their conversation was as rarely impersonal. The house stood high, and Rachael's windows commanded one of the most charming views on the Island. Below was the green valley, with the turbaned women moving among the cane, then the long white road with its splendid setting of royal palms, winding past a hill with groves of palms, marble fountains and statues, terraces covered with hibiscus and orchid, and another Great House on its summit. Far to the right, through an opening in the hills, was a glimpse of the sea.

Rachael lay on a couch in a little balcony during much of the soft winter day, and talked to Alexander of her mother and her youth, finally of his father, touching lightly on the almost forgotten episode with Levine. All that she did not say his creative brain divined, and when she told him what he had long suspected, that his mother's name was unknown to the Hamiltons of Grange, he accepted the fact as but one more obstacle to be overthrown in the battle with life which he had long known he was to fight unaided. To criticise his mother never occurred to him; her control of his heart and imagination was too absolute. His only regret was that she could not live until he was able to justify her. The audacity and boldness of his nature were stimulated by the prospect of this sharp battle with the world's most cherished convention, and he was fully aware of all that he owed to his mother. When he told her this she said:--

"I regret nothing, even though it has brought me to this. In the first place, it is not in me to do anything so futile. In the second place, I have been permitted to live in every part of my nature, and how many women can say that? In the third, you are in the world, and if I could live I should see you the honoured of all men. I die with regret because you need me for many years to come, and I have suffered so much that I never could suffer again. Remember always that you are to be a great man, not merely a successful one. Your mind and your will are capable of all things. Never try for the second best, and that means to put your immediate personal desire aside when it encounters one of the ideals of your time. Unless you identify yourself with the great principles of the world you will be a failure, because your mind is created in harmony with them, and if you use it for smaller purposes it will fail as surely as if it tried to lie or steal. Your passions are violent, and you have a blackness of hate in you which will ruin you or others according to the control you acquire over it; so be warned. But you never can fail through any of the ordinary defects of character. You are too bold and independent to lie, even if you had been born with any such disposition; you are honourable and tactful, and there is as little doubt of your fascination and your power over others. But remember--use all these great forces when your ambition is hottest, then you can stumble upon no second place. As for your heart, it will control your head sometimes, but your insatiable brain will accomplish so much that it can afford to lose occasionally; and the warmth of your nature will make you so many friends, that I draw from it more strength to die than from all your other gifts. Leave this Island as soon as you can. Ah, if I could give you but a few thousands to force the first doors!"

She died on the 25th of February, 1768. Her condition had been known for some days, and her sisters had shed many tears, aghast and deeply impressed at the tragic fate of this youngest, strangest, and most gifted of their father's children. Unconsciously they had expected her to do something extraordinary, and it was yet too soon to realize that she had. His aunts had announced far and wide that Alexander was the brightest boy on the Island, but that a nation lay folded in his saucy audacious brain they hardly could be expected to know.

V

The Great House of Peter Lytton was hung with white from top to bottom, and every piece of furniture looked as if the cold wing of death had touched it. A white satin gown, which had come from London for Rachael six years before,--just too late, for she never went to a ball again,--was taken from her mahogany press and wrapped about her wasted body. Her magnificent hair was put out of sight in a cap of blond lace.

The fashionable world of St. Croix, which had seen little of Rachael in life, came to the ceremonious exit of her body. They sat along the four sides of the large drawing-room, looking like a black dado against the white walls, and the Rev. Cecil Wray Goodchild, the pastor of the larger number of that sombre flock, sonorously read the prayers for the dead. Hugh Knox felt that his was the right to perform that ceremony; but he was a Presbyterian, and Peter Lytton was not one of his converts. He was there, however, and so were several Danes, whose colourless faces and heads completed the symbolization encircling the coffin. People of Nevis, St. Christopher, and St. Croix were there, the sisters born of the same mother, a kinsman of Hamilton's, himself named James Hamilton, these bleached people of the North, whose faces, virtuous as they were, would have seemed to the dead woman to shed the malignant aura of Levine's,--and the boy for whom the sacrificial body had been laid on the altar. He paid his debt in wretchedness then and there, and stood by the black pall which covered his mother, feeling a hundred years older than the brother who sat demurely on Mrs. Lytton's agitated lap.

When Mr. Goodchild closed his book, the slave women entered with silver pitchers containing mulled wines, porter mixed with sugar and spice, madeira, and port wine. Heaped high on silver salvers were pastries and "dyer bread," wrapped in white paper sealed with black wax. The guests refreshed themselves deeply, then followed the coffin, which was borne on the shoulders of the dead woman's brothers and their closest friends, across the valley to the private burying-ground of the Lyttons. Old James Lytton was placed beside her in the following year, and ten years later a child of Christiana Huggins, the wife of his son. The cane grows above their graves to-day.

VI

Alexander went home with Mrs. Mitchell, and it was long before he returned to Peter Lytton's. His favourite aunt was delighted to get him, and her husband, for whom Alexander had no love, was shortly to sail on one of his frequent voyages.

Mrs. Mitchell had a winter home in Christianstadt, for she loved the gay life of the little capital, and her large house, on the corner of King and Strand streets, was opened almost as often as Government House. This pile, with its imposing façade, represented to her the fulfilment of worldly ambitions and splendour. There was nothing to compare with it on Nevis or St. Kitts, nor yet on St. Thomas; and her imagination or memory gave her nothing in Europe to rival it. When Government House was closed she felt as if the world were eating bread and cheese. The Danes were not only the easiest and most generous of rulers, but they entertained with a royal contempt of pieces of eight, and their adopted children had neither the excuse nor the desire to return to their native isles.

Christianstadt, although rising straight from the harbour, has the picturesque effect of a high mountain-village. As the road across the Island finds its termination in King Street, the perceptible decline and the surrounding hills, curving in a crescent to the unseen shore a mile away, create the illusion. On the left the town straggles away in an irregular quarter for the poor, set thick with groves of cocoanut and palm. On the right, and parallel with the main road, is Company Street, and above is the mountain studded with great white stone houses, softened by the lofty roofs of the royal palm. All along King Street the massive houses stand close together, each with its arcade and its curious outside staircase of stone which leads to an upper balcony where one may catch the breeze and watch the leisures of tropic life. Almost every house has a court opening into a yard surrounded by the overhanging balconies of three sides of the building; and here the guinea fowl screech their matins, the roosters crow all night, there is always a negro asleep under a cocoanut tree, and a flame of colour from potted plants.

Down by the sea is the red fort, built on a bluff, and commanding a harbour beautiful to look upon, with its wooded island, its sharp high points, its sombre swamps covered with lacing mangroves, but locked from all the world but that which can come in sailing ships, by the coral reef on which so many craft have gone to pieces.

From Alexander's high window in Thomas Mitchell's house, he could see the lively Park behind the Fort; the boats sail over from the blue peaks of St. Thomas and St. John, the long white line of the sounding reef. Above the walls of Government House was the high bold curve of the mountain with its dazzling façades, its glitter of green. In the King Street of that day gentlemen in knee breeches and lace shirts, their hair in a powdered queue, were as familiar objects as turbaned blacks and Danes in uniform. After riding over their plantations "to hear the cane grow," they almost invariably brought up in town to talk over prospects with the merchants, or to meet each other at some more jovial resort. Sometimes they came clattering down the long road in a coach and four, postilions shouting at the pic'nees in the road, swerving, and halting so suddenly in some courtyard, that only a planter, accustomed to this emotional method of travel, could keep his seat. Ordinarily he preferred his horse, perhaps because it told no tales.

Thomas Mitchell had made his large fortune in the traffic of slaves, and was on terms of doubtful courtesy with Peter Lytton, who disapproved the industry. Blacks were by no means his only source of revenue; he had one of the two large general stores of the Island--the other was Nicholas Cruger's--and plantations of cane, whose yield in sugar, molasses, and rum never failed him. He was not a pleasing man in his family, and did not extend the hospitality of its roof to Alexander with a spontaneous warmth. His own children were married, and he did not look back upon the era of mischievous boys with sufficient enthusiasm to prompt him to adopt another. He yielded to his wife's voluble supplications because domestic harmony was necessary to his content, and Mistress Mitchell had her ways of upsetting it. Alexander was immediately too busy with his studies to pay attention to the indifferent grace with which Mr. Mitchell accepted his lot, and, fortunately, this industrious merchant was much away from home. Hugh Knox, as the surest means of diverting the boy from his grief, put him at his books the day after he arrived in Christianstadt. His own house was on Company Street, near the woods out of which the town seemed to spring; and in his cool library he gathered his boys daily, and crammed their brains with Latin and mathematics. The boys had met at Peter Lytton's before, but Knox easily persuaded them to the new arrangement, which was as grateful to him--he was newly married--as to Alexander. When the lessons were over he gave his favourite pupil a book and an easy-chair, or made experiments in chemistry with him until it was cool enough to ride or row. In the evening Alexander had his difficult lessons to prepare, and when he tumbled into bed at midnight he was too healthy not to sleep soundly. He spent two days of every week with his friend Ned Stevens, on a plantation where there were lively people and many horses. Gradually the heaviness of his grief sank of its weight, the buoyancy and vivacity of his mind were released, the eager sparkle returned to his eyes. He did not cease to regret his mother, nor passionately to worship her memory; but he was young, the future was an unresting magnet to his ambitious mind, devoted friends did their utmost, and his fine strong brain, eager for novelty and knowledge, opened to new impressions, closed with inherent philosophy to what was beyond recall. So passed Rachael Levine.

A year later his second trial befell him. Ned Stevens, the adored, set sail for New York to complete his education at King's College. Alexander strained his eyes after the sails of the ship for an hour, then burst unceremoniously into the presence of Hugh Knox.

"Tell me quick," he exclaimed; "how can I make two thousand pieces of eight? I must go to college. Why didn't my uncles send me with Neddy? He had no wish to go. He swore all day yesterday at the prospect of six years of hard work and no more excuses for laziness. I am wild to go. Why could it not have been I?"

"That's a curious way the world has, and you'll be too big a philosopher in a few years to ask questions like that. If you want the truth, I've wrangled with Peter Lytton,--it's no use appealing to Tom Mitchell,--but he's a bit close, as you know, when it actually comes to putting his hand in his pocket. He didn't send any of his own sons to New York or England, and never could see why anyone else did. Schooling, of course, and he always had a tutor and a governess out from England; but what the devil does a planter want of a college education? I argued that I couldn't for the life of me see the makings of a planter in you, but that by fishing industriously among your intellects I'd found a certain amount of respectable talent, and I thought it needed more training than I could give it; that I was nearing the end of my rope, in fact. Then he asked me what a little fellow like you would do with a college education after you got it, for he couldn't stand the idea of you trying to earn your living in a foreign city, where there was ice and snow on the ground in winter; and when I suggested that you might stay on in the college and teach, if you were afraid of being run over or frozen to death in the street, he said there was no choice between a miserable teacher's life and a planter's, and he'd leave you enough land to start you in life. I cursed like a planter, and left the house. But he loves you, and if you plead with him he might give way."

"I'd do anything else under heaven that was reasonable to get to New York but ask any man for money. Peter Lytton knows that I want learning more than all the other boys on this island; and if I'm little, I've broken in most of his colts and have never hesitated to fight. He finds his pathos in his purse. Why can't I make two thousand pieces of eight?"

"You'd be so long at it, poor child, that it would be too late to enter college; for there's a long apprenticeship to serve before you get a salary. But you must go. I've thought, thought about it, and I'll think more." He almost wished he had not married; but as he had no other cause to regret his venture, even his interest in young Hamilton did not urge him to deprive his little family of the luxuries so necessary in the West Indies. Economy on his salary would mean a small house instead of large rooms where one could forget the heat; curtailment of the voluminous linen wardrobes so soon demolished on the stones of the river; surrender of coach and horses. He trusted to a moment of sudden insight on the part of Peter Lytton, assisted by his own eloquent argument; and his belief in Alexander's destiny never wavered. Once he approached Mrs. Mitchell, for he knew she had money of her own; but, as he had expected, she went into immediate hysterics at the suggestion to part with her idol, and he hastily retreated.

Alexander turned over every scheme of making money his fertile brain conceived, and went so far as to ask his aunt to send him to New York, where he could work in one of the West Indian houses, and attend college by some special arrangement. He, too, retreated before Mrs. Mitchell's agitation, but during the summer another cause drove him to work, and without immediate reference to the wider education.

Mr. Mitchell was laid up with the gout and spent the summer on his plantation. His slaves fled at the sound of his voice, his wife wept incessantly at this the heaviest of her life's trials, and it was not long before Alexander was made to feel his dependence so keenly by the irascible planter that he leaped on his horse one day and galloped five miles under the hot sun to Lytton's Fancy.

"I want to work," he announced, with his usual breathless impetuosity when excited, bursting in upon Mr. Lytton, who was mopping his face after his siesta. "Put me at anything. I don't care what, except in Uncle Mitchell's store. I won't work for him."

Mr. Lytton laughed with some satisfaction. "So you two have come to loggerheads? Tom Mitchell, well, is insufferable. With gout in him he must bristle with every damnable trait in the human category. Come back and live with me," he added, in a sudden burst of sympathy, for the boy looked hot and tired and dejected; and his diminutive size appealed always to Peter Lytton, who was six feet two. "You're a fine little chap, but I doubt you're strong enough for hard work, and you love your books. Come here and read all day if you like. When you're grown I'll make you manager of all my estates. Gad! I'd be glad of an honest one! The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the Island, or that came to port. How old are you--twelve? I'll turn everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll be a man, and I'll be only too glad to put the whole thing in your hands."

Alexander struggled with an impulse to ask his uncle to send him to college, but not only did pride strike at the words, but he reflected with some cynicism that the affection he inspired invariably expressed itself in blatant selfishness, and that he might better appeal to the enemies he had made to send him from the Island. He shook his head.

"I'll remain idle no longer," he said. "I'm tired of eating bread that's given me. I'd rather eat yours than his, but I've made up my mind to work. What can you find for me now?"

"You are too obstinate to argue with in August. Cruger wants a reliable clerk. I heard him say so yesterday. He'll take you if I say the word, and give you a little something in the way of salary."

"I like Mr. Cruger," said Alexander, eagerly, "and so did my mother."

"He's a kind chap, but he'll work you to death, for he's always in a funk that Tom Mitchell'll get ahead of him. But you cannot do better. I have no house in town, but you can ride the distance between here and Christianstadt night and morning, if my estimable brother-in-law--whom may the gout convince of his sins--is too much for you."

But Alexander had no desire to return to the house where he had passed those last terrible weeks with his mother, and Mrs. Mitchell begged him on her knees to forgive the invalid, and sent him to the house in Christianstadt, where he would be alone until December; by that time, please God, Tom Mitchell would be on his way to Jamaica. But Alexander had little further trouble with that personage. Mr. Mitchell had his susceptibilities; he was charmed with a boy of twelve who was too proud to accept the charity of wealthy relatives and determined to make his living. Alexander entered Mr. Cruger's store in October. Mr. Mitchell did not leave the Island again until the following spring, and moved to town in November. He and Alexander discussed the prospects of rum, molasses, and sugar, the price of mahogany, of oats, cheese, bread, and flour, the various Island and American markets, until Mrs. Mitchell left the table. Her husband proudly told his acquaintance that his nephew, Alexander Hamilton, was destined to become the cleverest merchant in the Caribbees.

VII

But Alexander had small liking for his employment. He had as much affinity with the sordid routine of a general store and counting-house as Tom Mitchell had with the angels. But pride and ambition carried him through most of the distasteful experiences of his life. He would come short in nothing, and at that tender age, when his relatives were prepared to forgive his failures with good-humoured tact, he was willing to sacrifice even his books to clerical success. He soon discovered that he had that order of mind which concentrates without effort upon what ever demands its powers,--masters the detail of it with incredible swiftness. At first he was a general clerk, and attended to the loading and unloading of Mr. Cruger's sloops; after a time he was made bookkeeper; it was not long before he was in charge of the counting-house. He got back to his books in time--for business in the Islands finishes at four o'clock--and when he had learned all the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics Hugh Knox could teach him, he spent his leisure hours with Pope, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, and the few other English poets and works of Greek philosophers which Knox possessed, as well as several abridged histories of England and Europe. These interested him more than aught else, purely literary as his proclivities were supposed to be, and he read and reread them, and longed for some huge work in twenty volumes which should reveal Europe to his searching vision. But this was when he was fourteen, and had almost forgotten what the life of a mere boy was like. Shortly after he entered Mr. Cruger's store he wrote his famous letter to young Stevens. It will bear republication here, and its stilted tone, so different from the concise simplicity of his business letters, was no doubt designed to produce an effect on the mind of his more fortunate friend. He became a master of style, and before he was twenty; but there is small indication of the achievement in this letter, lovable as it is:--

ST. CROIX, November 11, 1769.

DEAR EDWARD, This serves to acknowledge the receipt of yours per Capt. Lowndes, which was delivered me yesterday The truth of Capt. Lightbowen and Lowndes' information is now verified by the presence of your father and sister, for whose safe arrival I pray, and that they may convey that satisfaction to your soul, that must naturally flow from the sight of absent friends in health; and shall for news this way, refer you to them.

As to what you say, respecting your soon having the happiness of seeing us all, I wish for an accomplishment of your hopes, provided they are concomitant with your welfare, otherwise not; though doubt whether I shall be present or not, for to confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, we have seen such schemes successful, when the projector is constant. I shall conclude by saying I wish there was a war.

I am, Dear Edward, Yours

ALEX. HAMILTON.

P.S. I this moment received yours by William Smith, and pleased to see you give such close application to study.

He hoped that in time Mr. Cruger would find it necessary to send him to New York; but his employer found him too useful on St. Croix, and recognized his abilities, not to the extent of advancing his intellectual interests, but of taxing and developing his capacity for business and its heavy responsibilities. In the following year he placed him in temporary charge of his branch house, in Frederikstadt, and Alexander never wished for war so desperately as when he stood under the arcade on Bay Street and stared out at the shallow green roadstead and the inimitable ocean beyond. Frederikstadt was a hamlet compared to Christianstadt, and unredeemed--the arcades excepting--by any of the capital's architectural or natural beauty. Alexander believed it to be the hottest, dullest, and most depressing spot on either hemisphere. The merchants and other residents were astonished that Nicolas Cruger should send a lad of thirteen to represent him in matters which involved large sums of money, but they recognized young Hamilton's ability even while they stared with some rudeness at the small figure in white linen, and the keen but very boyish face. When they passed him under the arcades, and asked him what ship he expected to heave in sight, he was tempted to say a man-of-war, but had no mind to reveal himself to the indifferent. He read from sundown until midnight or later, by the light of two long candles protected from draughts and insects by curving glass chimneys. Mosquitoes tormented him and cockroaches as long as his hand ran over the table; occasionally a land-crab rattled across the room, or a centipede appeared on the open page. But he was accustomed to these embellishments of tropic life, and although he anathematized them and the heat, he went on with his studies. It was about this time that he began to indulge in literary composition; and although less gifted boys than Alexander Hamilton struggle through this phase of mental development as their body runs the gamut of juvenile complaints, still it may be that had not his enormous energies been demanded in their entirety by a country in the terrible straits of rebirth, or had he dwelt on earth twenty years longer, he would have realized the ambitions of his mother and Hugh Knox, and become one of the greatest literary forces the world has had. But although this exercise of his restless faculties gave him pleasure, it was far from satisfying him, even then. He wanted the knowledge that was locked up in vast libraries far beyond that blinding stretch of sea, and he wanted action, and a sight of and a part in the great world. Meanwhile, he read every book he could find on the Island, made no mistakes in Mr. Cruger's counting-house, and stood dreaming under the arcade for hours at a time, muttering his thoughts, his mobile features expressing the ceaseless action of his brain.

Sometime during the previous year Peter Levine had returned to St. Croix for his health, and he remained with relatives for some time. He and Alexander met occasionally and were friendly. As he was a decent little chap our hero forgave him his paternity, although he never could quite assimilate the fact that he was his mother's child.

Alexander returned, after six months of Frederikstadt, to the East End of the Island. A few months later, Mr. Cruger, whose health had failed, went to New York for an extended sojourn, leaving the entire responsibility of the business in young Hamilton's hands. Men of all ages were forced to obey and be guided by a boy in the last weeks of his fourteenth year, and there were many manifestations of jealous ill-will. Some loved, others hated him, but few submitted gracefully to a leadership which lowered their self-esteem. For the first time Alexander learned that even a mercantile life can be interesting. He exercised all the resources of his inborn tact with those who had loved and those who did not hate him, and won them to a grateful acceptance of a mastership which was far more considerate and sympathetic than anything they had known. As for his enemies, he let them see the implacable quality of his temper, mortified them by an incessant exposure of their failings, struck aside their clumsy attempts to humiliate him with the keen blade of a wit that sent them skulking. Finally they submitted, but they cursed him, and willingly would have wrung his neck and flung him into the bay. As for Hamilton, there was no compromise in him, even then, where his enemies were concerned. He enjoyed their futile wrath, and would not have lifted his finger to flash it into liking.

Only once the tropical passions of his inheritance conquered his desire to dominate through the forces of his will alone. One of the oldest employees, a man named Cutter, had shown jealousy of young Hamilton from the first, and a few days after Mr. Cruger's departure began to manifest signs of open rebellion. He did his work ill, or not at all, absented himself from the store for two days, and returned to his post without excuse, squaring his shoulders about the place and sneering his contempt of youthful cocks of the walk. Alexander struggled to maintain a self-control which he felt to be strictly compatible with the dignity of his position, although his gorge rose so high that it threatened to choke him. The climax came when he gave Cutter a peremptory order, and the man took out a cigar, lit it, and laughed in his face. For the next few moments Alexander had a confused impression that he was in hell, struggling his way through the roar and confusion of his nether quarters. When he was himself again he was in the arms of his chief assistant, and Mr. Cutter bled profusely on the floor. He was informed later that he had "gone straight over the counter with a face like a hurricane" and assaulted his refractory hireling with such incredible rapidity of scientific fist that the man, who was twice his size, had succumbed from astonishment and an almost supernatural terror. Alexander, who was ashamed of himself, apologized at once, but gave the man his choice of treating him with proper respect or leaving the store. Cutter answered respectfully that he would remain; and he gave no further trouble.

"You'll get your head blown off one of these days," said Hugh Knox to Alexander, on a Sunday, as they sat in the library over two long glasses of "Miss Blyden," a fashionable drink made of sugar, rum, and the juice of the prickly pear, which had been buried in the divine's garden for the requisite number of months. "These Creoles are hot, even when they're only Danes. It's not pleasant for those clerks, for it isn't as if you had the look of the man you are. You look even younger than your age, and for a man of thirty to say 'Yes, sir' to a brat like you chokes him, and no wonder. I believe if there was a war this minute, you'd rouse the Island and lead it to battle without a misgiving or an apology. Well, don't let your triumphs lead to love of this business. I happen to know that Cruger means to make a partner of you in a few years, for he thinks the like of you never dropped into a merchant's counting-house; but never forget that your exalted destiny is to be a great man of letters, a historian, belike. You're taking to history, I notice, and you're getting a fine vocabulary of your own."

"I'd like to know what I'll write the history of if I'm to rot in this God-forsaken place. Caribs? Puling rows between French and English? I'd as well be up on Grange with my mother if it wasn't for you and your books. I want the education of a collegian. I want to study and read everything there is to be studied and read. I've made out a list of books to send for, when I've money enough, as long as you are. It's pinned on the wall of my room."

"And I suppose you've never a qualm but that head of yours will hold it all. You've a grand opinion of yourself, Alec."

"That's a cutting thing for you to say to me, sir," cried Alexander, springing to his feet. "I thought you loved me. If you think I'm a fool, I'll not waste more of your time."

"A West Indian temper beats the conceit out of the Irish. You'll control yours when you're older, for there's nothing you won't do when you put your mind to it, and you'll see the need for not making a fool of yourself too often. But as for its present liking for exercise--it's a long way the liveliest thing on St. Croix. However, you've forgiven me; I know that by the twinkle in your eye, so I'll tell you that your brain will hold all you care to put into it, and that you'll have made another list as long as King Street before you're five years older. Meanwhile, I've some books on theology and ethics you haven't had a dash at yet, and you can't read my other old books too often. Each time you'll find something new. Sitting up till midnight won't hurt you, but don't forget to say your prayers."

Knox, long since, had laid siege to Alexander's susceptible and ardent mind with the lively batteries of his religious enthusiasms. His favourite pupil was edifyingly regular in attendance at church, and said his prayers with much fervour. The burden of his petitions was deliverance from St. Croix.

When this deliverance was effected by a thunderbolt from heaven, his saving sense of humour and the agitated springs of his sympathy forbade a purely personal application. But twenty years later he might have reflected upon the opportune cause of his departure from St. Croix as one of the ironies of the world's history; for an Island was devastated, men were ruined, scores were killed, that one man might reach his proper sphere of usefulness.

VIII

Early in August, 1772, Mr. Cruger sent him on a business tour to several of the neighbouring Islands, including the great _entrepôt_ of the West Indies,--St. Thomas. Despite the season, the prospect of no wind for days at a time, or winds in which no craft could live, Alexander trembled with delight at the idea of visiting the bustling brilliant versatile town of Charlotte Amalie, in whose harbour there were sometimes one hundred and eighty ships, where one might meet in a day men of every clime, and whose beauty was as famous as her wealth and importance. How often Alexander had stared at the blue line of the hills above her! Forty miles away, within the range of his vision, was a bit of the great world, the very pivot of maritime trade, and one cause and another had prevented him from so much as putting his foot on a sloop whose sails were spread.

As soon as the details of his tour were settled he rode out to the plantations to take leave of his relatives. Mrs. Mitchell, who barred the hurricane windows every time, the wind rose between July and November, and sat with the barometer in her hand when the palms began to bend, wept a torrent and implored him to abstain from the madness of going to sea at that time of the year. Her distress was so acute and real that Alexander, who loved her, forgot his exultation and would have renounced the trip, had he not given his word to Mr. Cruger.

"I'll be careful, and I'll ride out the day after I return," he said, arranging his aunt on the sofa with her smelling-bottle, an office he had performed many times. "You know the first wind of the hurricane is a delight to the sailor, and we never shall be far from land. I'm in command, and I'll promise you to make for shore at the first sign of danger. Then I shall be as safe as here."

His aunt sighed for fully a minute. "If I only could believe that you would be careful about anything. But you are quite a big boy now, almost sixteen, and ought to be old enough to take care of yourself."

"If I could persuade you that I am not quite a failure at keeping the breath in my body we both should be happier. However, I vow not to set sail from any island if a hurricane is forming, and to make for port every time the wind freshens."

"Listen for that terrible roar in the southeast, and take my barometer--Heaven knows what barometers are made for; there are not three on the Island. I shall drive in to church every Sunday and besiege Heaven with my supplications."

"Well, spare me a breeze or I shall pray for a hurricane."

He did not see Mrs. Lytton or James, but Mr. Lytton had scant apprehension of hurricanes, and was only concerned lest his nephew roll about in the trough of the sea under an August sun for weeks at a time. "That's when a man doesn't repent of his sins; he knows there is nothing worse to come," he said. "I'd rather have a hurricane," and Alexander nodded. Mr. Lytton counted out a small bag of pieces of eight and told the boy to buy his aunt a silk gown in Charlotte Amalie. "I've noticed that if it's all one colour you're not so sure to have it accepted with a sigh of resignation," he said. "But be careful of plaids and stripes." And Alexander, with deeper misgivings than Mrs. Mitchell had inspired, accepted the commission and rode away.

He set sail on the following day, and made his tour of the lesser islands under a fair breeze. Late in the month he entered the harbour of St. Thomas, and was delighted to find at least fifty ships in port, despite the season. It was an unusually busy year, and he had dared to hope for crowded waters and streets; exquisite as Charlotte Amalie might be to look upon, he wanted something more than a lovely casket.

The town is set on three conical foot-hills, which bulge at equal distances against an almost perpendicular mountain, the tip, it is said, of a range whose foundations are four miles below. The three sections of the town sweep from base to pointed apex with a symmetry so perfect, their houses are so light and airy of architecture, so brilliant and varied of colour, that they suggest having been called into being by the stroke of a magician's wand to gratify the whim of an Eastern potentate. Surely, they are a vast seraglio, a triple collection of pleasure houses where captive maidens are content and nautch girls dance with feet like larks. Business, commerce, one cannot associate with this enchanting vista; nor cockroaches as long as one's foot, scorpions, tarantulas, and rats.

When Alexander was in the town he found that the houses were of stone, and that one long street on the level connected the three divisions. Flights of steps, hewn out of the solid rock of that black and barren range, led to the little palaces that crowned the cones, and there were palms, cocoanuts, and tamarind trees to soften the brilliancy of façade and roof. Above the town was Blackbeard's Castle; and Bluebeard's so high on the right that its guns could have levelled the city in an hour. Although not a hundred years old, and built by the Danes, both these frowning towers were museums of piratical tradition, and travellers returned to Europe with imaginations expanded.

The long street interested Alexander's practical mind more than legends or architecture. Huge stone buildings--warehouses, stores, exchange- and counting-houses--extended from the street to the edge of the water, where ships were unloaded and loaded from doors at the rear. Men of every nation and costume moved in that street; and for a day Mr. Cruger's business was in abeyance, while the boy from the quiet Island of St. Croix leaned against one of the heavy tamarind trees at the foot of the first hill, and watched the restless crowd of Europeans, Asiatics, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, North and South Americans. There were as many national costumes as there were rival flags in the harbour. There was the British admiral in his regimentals and powdered queue, the Chinaman in his blouse and pigtail, the Frenchman with his earrings, villanous Malays, solemn merchants from Boston, and negroes trundling barrows of Spanish dollars. But it was the extraordinary assortment of faces and the violent contrasts of temperament and character they revealed which interested Alexander more than aught else. With all his reading he had not imagined so great a variety of types; his mental pictures had been the unconscious reflection of British, Danish, or African. Beyond these he had come in contact with nothing more striking than sailors from the neighbouring Islands, who had suggested little besides the advisability of placing an extra guard over the money boxes whilst they were in port. Most of these men who surged before him were merchants of the first rank or the representatives of others as important,--captains of large ships and their mates. The last sauntered and cursed the heat, which was infernal; but the merchants moved rapidly from one business house to another, or talked in groups, under the tamarind trees, of the great interests which brought them to the Indies. Upon the inherent characteristics which their faces expressed were superimposed the different seals of those acquired,--shrewdness, suspicion, a hawk-like alertness, the greed of acquisition. Alexander, with something like terror of the future, reflected that there was not one of these men he cared to know. He knew there were far greater cities than the busy little _entrepôt_ of the West Indies, but he rightly doubted if he ever should see again so cosmopolitan a mob, a more picked assortment of representative types. Not one looked as if he remembered his wife and children, his creed, or the art and letters of his land. They were a sweating, cursing, voluble, intriguing, greedy lot, picturesque to look upon, profitable to study, calculated to rouse in a boy of intellectual passions a fury of final resentment against the meannesses of commercial life. Alexander jerked his shoulders with disgust and moved slowly down the street. After he had reflected that great countries involved great ideas, and that there was no place for either political or moral ideals in an isolated and purely commercial town like little Charlotte Amalie, he recovered his poise, and lent himself to his surroundings again with considerable philosophy.

He had almost crossed the foot of the third hill when he turned abruptly into a large store, unlike any he had seen. It was full of women, splendid creatures, who were bargaining with merchants' clerks for the bales of fine stuffs which had been opened for the display of samples to the wholesale buyers from other Islands. These women purchased the exiled stuffs to sell to the ladies of the capital, and this was the only retail trade known to the St. Thomas of that day. Alexander bethought himself of his uncle's commission, and precipitately bought from the open bale nearest the door, then, from the next, a present for Mrs. Mitchell. Mrs. Lytton, who was an invalid and fifty-eight, received, a fortnight later, a dress pattern of rose-coloured silk, and Mrs. Mitchell, who aspired to be a leader of fashion, one of elderly brown. But Alexander was more interested in the sellers than in the possible dissatisfaction of his aunts. The women of his acquaintance were fair and fragile, and the Africans of St. Croix were particularly hideous, being still of parent stock. But these creatures were tawny and magnificent, with the most superb figures, the most remarkable swing, that ever a man had looked upon; and glorious eyes, sparkling with deviltry. On their heads the white linen was wound to a high point and surmounted by an immense hat, caught up at one side with a flower. They wore for clothing a double skirt of coloured linen, and a white fichu, open in a point to the waist and leaving their gold-coloured arms quite bare. They moved constantly, if only from one foot to the other. Occasionally their eyes flashed sparks, and they flew at each other's throats, screeching like guinea fowl, but in a moment they were laughing good-naturedly again, and chattering in voices of a remarkable soft sweetness. Several of them noticed Alexander, for his beauty had grown with his years. His eyes were large and gray and dark, like his mother's, but sparkled with ardour and merriment. His mouth was chiselled from a delicate fulness to a curving line; firm even then, but always humorous, except when some fresh experience with the ingenuous self-interest of man deepened the humour to cynicism. The nose was long, sharply cut, hard, strong in the nostrils, the head massive, the brow full above the eyes, and the whole of a boyish and sunburned fairness. He could fetch a smile that gave his face a sweet and dazzling beauty. His figure was so supple and well knit, so proud in its bearing, that no woman then or later ever found fault with its inconsiderable inches; and his hands and feet were beautiful. His adoring aunt attended to his wardrobe, and he wore to-day, as usual, white linen knee-breeches, black silk stockings, a lawn shirt much beruffled with lace. His appearance pleased these gorgeous birds of plumage, and one of them snatched him suddenly from the floor and gave him a resounding smack. Alexander, much embarrassed, but not wholly displeased, retreated hurriedly, and asked an Englishman who they were and whence they came.

"They are literally the pick of Martinique, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the other Islands celebrated for beautiful women. Of course they've all got a touch of the tar brush in them, but the French or the Spanish blood makes them glorious for a few years, and during those few they come here and make hay. Some come at certain seasons only, others perch here till they change in a night from houri to hag. This daylight trade gives them a _raison d'étre_, but wait till after dark. God! this is a hell hole; but by moonlight or torchlight this street is one of the sights of the earth. The magnificent beauty of the women, enhanced by silken stuffs of every colour, the varied and often picturesque attire of the men, all half mad with drink--well, if you want to sleep, you'd better get a room high up."

"Mine is up one hundred and seventeen steps. I am but afraid I may not see all there is to see."

But before the week was half out he had tired of St. Thomas by day and by night. The picture was too one-sided, too heavily daubed with colour. It made a palette of the imagination, sticky and crude. He began to desire the green plantations of St. Croix, and more than ever he longed for the snow-fields of the north. Two days of hard work concluded Mr. Cruger's business, and on the thirtieth of the month he weighed anchor, in company with many others, and set sail for St. Croix. He started under a fair breeze, but a mile out the wind dropped, and he was until midnight making the harbour of Christianstadt When they were utterly becalmed the sun seemed to focus his hell upon the little sloop. It rolled sickeningly in the oily wrinkled waters, and Alexander put his Pope in his pocket. The sea had a curious swell, and he wondered if an earthquake were imminent. The sea was not quite herself when her foundations were preparing to shake. Earth-quakes had never concerned him, but as the boat drifted past the reef into the harbour of Christianstadt at midnight, he was assailed by a fit of terror so sudden and unaccountable that he could recall but one sensation in his life that approached it: shortly after he arrived on the Island he had stolen down to the lagoon one night, fascinated by the creeping mist, the scowling manchineels, the talk of its sinister inhabitant, and was enjoying mightily his new feeling of creeping terror, when the silence was broken by a heavy swish, and he saw the white belly of the shark not three feet from him. He had scampered up the hill to his mother's skirts as fast as his legs could carry him, nor visited the lagoon again until the shark was mouldering on its bed. To-night a mist, almost imperceptible except on the dark line of coast, changed the beauty of the moonbeams to a livid light that gave the bay the horrid pallor of a corpse. The masses of coral rock in the shallow waters looked leprous, the surface was so glassy that it fell in splinters from the oars of the boat that towed them to shore. There was not a sound from the reef, not a sound from the land. The slender lacing mangroves in the swamp looked like upright serpents, black and petrified, and the Fort on the high bluff might have been a sarcophagus full of dead men but for the challenge of the sentry.

Alexander began to whistle, then climbed down into the boat and took an oar. When he had his feet on land he walked up King Street more hastily than was his habit in the month of August. But here, although the town might have been a necropolis, so quiet was it, it had not put on a death mask. There was no mist here; the beautiful coral houses gleamed under the moonbeams as if turned to marble, and Alexander forgot the horror of the waters and paused to note, as he had done many times before, the curious Alpine contrast of these pure white masses against the green and burnished arches of tropic trees. Then he passed through the swimming-bath to his bed, and a half-hour later slept as soundly as if the terrible forces of the Caribbean world were safe in leash.

IX

When he awoke, at seven o'clock, he heard a dull low roar in the southeast, which arrested his attention at once as a sound quite dissimilar from the boom of the reef. As he crossed Strand Street to Mr. Cruger's store, an hour later, he noticed that a strong wind blew from the same direction and that the atmosphere was a sickly yellow. For a moment, he thought of the hurricane which he had passed his life expecting, but he had a head full of business and soon forgot both roar and wind. He was immediately immersed in a long and precise statement of his trip, writing from notes and memory, muttering to himself, utterly oblivious to the opening of the windows or the salutations of the clerks. Mr. Cruger arrived after the late breakfast. He looked worried, but shook Alexander's hand heartily, and thanked heaven, with some fervour, that he had returned the night before. They retired to the private office on the court, and Mr. Cruger listened with interest to young Hamilton's account of his trip, although it was evident that his mind felt the strain of another matter. He said abruptly:--

"The barometer was down two-tenths when I visited the Fort at a quarter to eleven. I'd give a good deal to know where it is now."

Alexander remembered his aunt's barometer, which he had hung in his room before sailing, and volunteered to go over and look at it.

"Do," exclaimed Mr. Cruger; "and see if the wind's shifted."

As Alexander crossed Strand Street to the side door of Mr. Mitchell's house he encountered the strongest wind he had ever known, and black clouds were racing back and forth as if lost and distracted. He returned to tell Mr. Cruger that the barometer stood at 30.03.

"And the wind hasn't shifted?" demanded Mr. Cruger. "That means we'll be in the direct path of a hurricane before the day is half out, unless things change for the better. If the barometer falls four-tenths"--he spread out his hands expressively. "Of course we have many scares. Unless we hear two double guns from the Fort, there will be no real cause for alarm; but when you hear that, get on your horse as quick as you can and ride to warn the planters. The Lyttons and Stevens and Mitchells will do for you. I'll send out three of the other boys."

They returned to accounts. Mr. Cruger expressed his gratification repeatedly and forgot the storm, although the wind was roaring up King Street and rattling the jalousies until flap after flap hung on a broken hinge. Suddenly both sprang to their feet, books and notes tumbling to the floor. Booming through the steady roar of the wind was the quick thunder of cannon, four guns fired in rapid succession.

As Alexander darted through the store, the clerks were tumbling over each other to secure the hurricane windows; for until the last minute, uneasy as they were, they had persuaded themselves that St. Croix was in but for the lashing of a hurricane's tail, and had bet St. Kitts against Monserrat as flattening in the path of the storm. The hurricane windows were of solid wood, clamped with iron. It took four men to close them against the wind.

Alexander was almost flung across Strand Street. Shingles were flying, the air was salt with spray skimmed by the wind from the surface of waves which were leaping high above the Fort, rain was beginning to fall. Mr. Mitchell's stables were in the rear of his house. Every negro had fled to the cellar. Alexander unearthed four and ordered them to close the hurricane windows. He had saddled many a horse, and he urged his into Strand Street but a few moments later. Here he had to face the wind until he could reach the corner and turn into King, and even the horse staggered and gasped as if the breath had been driven out of him. He reared back against the wall, and Alexander was obliged to dismount and drag him up the street, panting for breath himself, although his back was to the wind and he kept his head down. The din was terrific. Cannon balls might have been rattling against the stones of every house, and to this was added a roar from the reef as were all the sounds of the Caribbean Sea gathered there. Alexander would have pulled his hat down over his ears, for the noise was maddening, but it had flown over the top of a house as he left the store. He was a quarter of an hour covering the few yards which lay between the stable and the corner, and when he reached the open funnel of King Street he was nearly swept off his feet. Fortunately the horse loved him, and, terrified as it was, permitted him to mount; and then it seemed to Alexander, as they flew up King Street to the open country, that they were in a fork of the wind, which tugged and twisted at his neck while it carried them on. He flattened himself to the horse, but kept his eyes open and saw other messengers, as dauntless as himself, tearing in various directions to warn the planters, many of whom had grown callous to the cry of "Wolf."

The horse fled along the magnificent avenue of royal palms which connected the east and west ends of the Island. They were bending and creaking horribly, the masses of foliage on the summits cowering away from the storm, wrapping themselves about in a curiously pitiful manner; the long blade-like leaves seemed striving each to protect the other. Through the ever-increasing roar of the storm, above the creaking of the trees, the pounding of the rain on the earth, and on the young cane, Alexander heard a continuous piercing note, pitched upon one monotonous key, like the rattle of a girl's castinets he had heard on St. Thomas. His brain, indifferent now to the din, was as active as ever, and he soon made out this particular noise to be the rattle of millions of seeds in the dry pods of the "shaggy-shaggy," or "giant," a common Island tree, which had not a leaf at this season, nothing but countless pods as dry as parchment and filled with seeds as large as peas. Not for a second did this castinet accompaniment to the stupendous bass of the storm cease, and Alexander, whose imagination, like every other sense in him, was quickening preternaturally, could fancy himself surrounded by the orchestra of hell, the colossal instruments of the infernal regions performed upon by infuriate Titans. He was not conscious of fear, although he knew that his life was not worth a second's purchase, but he felt a wild exhilaration, a magnificent sense of defiance of the most powerful element that can be turned loose on this planet; his nostrils quivered with delight; his soul at certain moments, when his practical faculty was uncalled upon, felt as if high in the roaring space with the Berserkers of the storm.

Suddenly his horse, in spite of the wall of wind at his back, stood on his hind legs, then swerved so fiercely that his rider was all but unseated. A palm had literally leaped from the earth, sprawled across the road not a foot in front of the horse. The terrified brute tore across the cane-field, and Alexander made no attempt to stop him, for, although the rain was now falling as if the sea had come in on the high back of the wind, he believed himself to be on the Stevens plantation. The negro village was not yet deserted, and he rode to the west side of the mill and shouted his warning to the blacks crouching there. On every estate was a great bell, hung in an open stone belfry, and never to be rung except to give warning of riot, flood, fire, or hurricane. One of the blacks obeyed Alexander's peremptory command to ring this bell, and, as it was under the lee of the mill, reached it in a moment. As Alexander urged his horse out into the storm again, he heard the rapid agitated clang of the bell mingle discordantly with the bass of the wind and the piercing rattle of the giant's castinets. He rode on through the cane-field, although if the horse stumbled and injured itself, he would have to lie on his face till the storm was over. But there was a greater danger in the avenue; he was close enough to see and hear tree after tree go down, or their necks wrenched and the great green heads rush through the air with a roar of their own, their long glittering leaves extended before them as if in supplication.

The Lytton plantation was next on his way, and Alexander rode straight for the house, as the mills and village lay far to the left. The hurricane shutters on the sides encountering the storm were already closed, and he rode round to the west, where he saw his uncle's anxious face at a drawing-room window. Mr. Lytton flung himself across the sash in an attempt to lift the boy from his horse into the room, and when Alexander shouted that he was on his way to the Mitchell estate, expostulated as well as he could without breaking his throat. He begged him to rest half an hour at least, but when informed that the Fort for the first time within the memory of man had fired its double warning, he ran to fasten his hurricane windows more securely, and despatch a slave to warn his blacks; their huts never would survive the direct attack of a hurricane. He was horrified to think of his favourite exposed to a fury, which, clever and intrepid as he was, he had small chance of outwitting; but at least he had that one chance, and Mrs. Mitchell was alone.

Alexander passed through one other estate before he reached Mr. Mitchell's, terrifying those he warned almost as much by his wild and ragged appearance--his long hair drove straight before him, and his thin shirt was in sodden ribbons--as by his news that a first-class hurricane was upon them. At last he was in the cane-fields of his destination, and the horse, as if in communication with that ardent brain so close to his own, suddenly accelerated his already mercurial pace, until it seemed to Alexander that he gathered up his legs and darted like an inflated swallow straight through crashing avenues and flying huts to the stable door. Fortunately this solid building opened to the west, and Alexander was but a few moments stalling and feeding the animal who had saved two necks by his clever feet that day. He was sorry so poorly to reward him as to close and bar the door, but he feared that he might forget to attend to it when the hurricane veered, and in all the fury of approaching climax was pouring out of the west.

The house was only an eighth of a mile away, but Alexander was half an hour reaching it. He had to travel on his knees, sometimes on his stomach, until he reached the western wall, keeping his arm pressed close against his eyes; his sense of humour, not to be extinguished by a hurricane, rebelling at the ignoble pass to which his pride had come. When he reached the north wall he rose, thinking he could cling to the projections, but he was still facing the storm; he flung himself prostrate again to avoid being lifted off his feet and sailing with the rubbish of Mr. Mitchell's plantation. As he reached the corner the wind gave him a vicious flip, which landed him almost at the foot of the steps, but he was comparatively safe, and he sat down to recover his breath. He could afford a few moments' rest, for the heavy wooden windows facing the east, north, and south, were closed. Here he was sheltered in a way. The only two good words that can be said for a hurricane are that it gives sufficient warning of its approach, and that it blows from one point of the compass at a time. Alexander sat there panting and watched the wild battle in mid-air of shingles, fences, thatched roofs, and tree-tops; listened to the artillery of the storm, which, with a stone building to break its steady roar, sounded as if a hundred cannon were bombarding the walls and rattling here and there on their carriages meanwhile; listened to crash after crash of tree and wall, the terrified bowlings and bellowings of beasts, the shrieking and grinding of trees, the piercing monotone of the dry seeds in their cases of parchment, the groans and prayers of the negroes in the cellar behind him. He turned his head and looked through the windows of the great apartment, which, although above ground, was supposed to be safest in a hurricane. All but the western blinds being closed, the cellar was almost dark, but Alexander knew that it was packed: doubtless every African on the estate was there; he could see, for some distance back, row after row of rolling eyes and hanging tongues. Some knelt on the shoulders of others to get the air. Alexander shuddered. The sight reminded him of his uncle's slave-ships, where the blacks came, chained together, standing in the hold, so closely packed that if one died he could not fall, nor the others protect themselves from the poisons of a corpse, which pressed hard against the living for twenty hours perhaps, before it was unchained and flung to the sharks. Alexander went close to one of the windows and shouted to them not to forget to secure the western blinds when the lull came, then ran up the steps and vaulted through an open window. It was a few minutes before he found his aunt, and it must be recorded that on his way to the front of the house he looked under two beds and into four wardrobes. He came upon her in the drawing-room, valiantly struggling with a hurricane window. Her hair was dishevelled, and her eyes bulged with horror, but even as Alexander came to the rescue, she shoved the bar into place. Then she threw herself into his arms and fainted. He had but time to fling water on her face, when a loud rattle from another window sent him bounding to it, and for ten minutes he struggled to fasten the blind soundly again, while it seemed to him that a hundred malignant fingers were tugging at its edge. He had no sooner secured it, than his aunt's voice at his ear begged him to try every window on three sides of the house, and he went rapidly from one to the other, finding most of them in need of attention--long disuse had weakened both staples and hooks. His aunt trotted after him, thumping every window, and reminding him that if one went, and the wind burst in, the roof would be off and the torrents upon them before they could reach the cellar.

Fortunately for those who fought the storm, the temperature had fallen with the barometer, and these two dared not relax their vigilance for a moment. Every negro had deserted to the lower region. Alexander was unable to change his wet clothes or to refresh himself with so much as a banana, but there was not a second's time to think of hunger or discomfort. More than once that sense of wild exultation in fighting a mighty element possessed him. His own weak hands and a woman's weaker against one of the Titanic hurricanes of the world's history, with a prospect of winning the fight, was a sight to move comfortable gods to paean or laughter, according to their spiritual development.

But during much of that terrible day and night Alexander's brain was obliged to work on device after device to strengthen those battered boards which alone protected the house from destruction, its inmates, perhaps, from death. A tamarind tree came down on a corner of the roof with a crash; and when Mrs. Mitchell and Alexander reached the room, which was in a wing, the rain was struggling past the heavy mass through a hole in the roof. They closed up the room, as well as the jalousies of the inner walls, but as they returned to the windows they heard the rain fighting to pass the branches, and knew that if the wind snatched the tree, the deluge would come in.

Mrs. Mitchell neither fainted again nor exhibited other sign of fear. While that hurricane lasted she was all Mary Fawcett; and Alexander, meeting her eyes now and again, or catching sight of her as she darted forward at the first rattle of a shutter, recalled his mother's many anecdotes of his redoubtable grandmother, and wondered if that valiant old soul had flown down the storm to the relief of the fortress.

Toward evening that sudden lull came which means that at last the besieged are in the very centre of the hurricane, and will have respite while the monster is swinging his tail to the west. Alexander and Mrs. Mitchell, after opening the windows on the east side of the house, and securing those opening to the west, went to the pantry and made a substantial meal without sitting or selecting. To his last day Alexander could not remember what he ate that night, although he recalled the candle in the long chimney, the constant craning of his aunt's head, the incessant racing of the rats along the beams. He went to his room and took a cold bath, which with the food and suspended excitement quite refreshed him; put on dry clothes, nailed a board against the hole in the roof, then sat down with Mrs. Mitchell in the western gallery to await the hurricane's return.

"We have three windows where we had one before," remarked Mrs. Mitchell; "and the hinges of that door are rusty. God knows! If you had not come, the roof would have gone long before this."

"The silence is horrible," said Alexander.

It was, indeed, earsplitting. Not a sound arose from that devastated land. Birds and beasts must lie dead by the thousand; not a horseman ventured abroad; not a whisper came from the cellar, where two hundred Africans might be dead from fright or suffocation. Mrs. Mitchell had lit the candles, and there was something sinister and ironical in the steady flames. How long before they would leap and add the final horror to what must be a night of horrors? It was impossible to work in the dark, but every yellow point was a menace.

They had not long to endure the silence. This time the hurricane sent no criers before it. It burst out of the west with a fury so intensified that Alexander wondered if one stone in Frederikstadt were left upon another. It was evident that it had gathered its forces for a final assault, and its crashing and roaring, as it tore across the unhappy Island it had marked for destruction, was that of a gigantic wheel whirling ten thousand cannon, exploding, and lashing each other in mid-air. It seemed to Alexander that every ball they surely carried rattled on the roof, and the heavy stone structure vibrated for the first time. It was two hours before he and Mrs. Mitchell met again, for they worked at opposite ends of the long gallery; but in the third both rushed simultaneously to the door. It sprang back from its rusty fastenings, and they were but in time to seize the bar which passed through a staple in its middle, and pull it inward until it pressed hard against the jamb on the right. There was no other way to secure it, and for three hours Alexander and Mrs. Mitchell dragged at it alternately, while the other attended to the windows. By this time Alexander had ceased to wonder if he should see another morning, or much to care: the storm was so magnificent in its almighty power, its lungs of iron bellowed its purpose with such furious iteration, as if out of all patience with the mortals who defied it, that Alexander was almost inclined to apologize. More than once it took the house by the shoulders and shook it, and then a yell would come from below, a simultaneous note pitched in a key of common agony. Suddenly the house seemed to spring from its foundations, then sink back as if to collapse. Alexander called out that it had been uprooted and would go down the hill in another moment, but Mrs. Mitchell, who was at the bar, muttered, "An earthquake. I believe a hurricane shakes the very centre of the earth."

They feared that the foundations of the house had been loosened, and that the next blast would turn it over, but the house was one of the strongest in the Caribbees, built to withstand the worst that Nature could do, so long as man saw to its needs; and when the hurricane at last revolved its artillery away into the east, carrying with it that piercing rattle of the giant's castinets, which never for a moment had ceased to perform its part, roof and walls were firm. Mrs. Mitchell and Alexander sank where they had stood, and slept for twenty hours.

X

Alexander rode back to Christianstadt two days later, and again and again he drew a hard breath and closed his eyes. It was a sight to move any man, and the susceptible and tender nature of young Hamilton bled for the tragedy of St. Croix. There was not a landmark, not a cane-field, to remind him that it was the beautiful Island on which he had spent the most of his remembering years. Although all of the Great Houses were standing, their mien and manner were so altered by the disappearance of their trees and outbuildings, and by the surrounding pulpy flats in place of the rippling acres of young cane, that they were unrecognizable. Here and there were masses of débris, walls and thatched roofs swept far from the village foundations; but as a rule there was but a board here or a bunch of dried leaves there, a battered utensil or a stool, to reward the wretched Africans who wandered about searching for the few things they had possessed before the storm. They looked hopeless and dull, as if their faculties had been stunned by the prolonged incessant noise of the hurricane.

Alexander was riding down what a week ago had been the most celebrated avenue in the Antilles. Where there were trees at all, they were headless, the long gray twisted trunks as repulsive as they had once been beautiful The road was littered with many of the fallen; but others were far away in what had been the cane-fields, serpents and lizards sunning themselves on the dead roots. Even stone walls were down, and under them, sometimes, were men. Mills were in ruins; for no one had remained to keep bars in their staples. Tanks of last year's rum and treacle had been flung through the walls, and their odours mingled with the stench of decomposing men and cattle. The horrid rattle of the land-crab was almost the only sound in that desolate land. "The Garden of the Antilles" looked like a putrid swamp, and she had not a beauty on her.

Alexander turned at a cross-road into a path which led through the Grange estate to the private burying-ground of the Lyttons. These few moments taxed his courage more heavily than the ride with the hurricane had done, and more than once he opened his clenched teeth and half turned his horse's head. But he went on, and before long he had climbed to the end of his journey. The west wall of the little cemetery had been blown out, and the roof of old James Lytton's tomb lay with its débris. A tree, which evidently had been torn from the earth and flung from a distance, lay half in and half out of the enclosure. But his mother's headstone, which stood against the north wall, was undisturbed, although the mound above her was flat and sodden. The earth had been strong enough to hold her. Alexander remembered its awful air of finality as it opened to receive her, then closed over her. What he had feared was that the burying-ground, which stood on the crest of a hill, would have been uprooted and scattered over the cane-fields.

He rode on to Christianstadt. There the evidences of the hurricane were less appalling, for the houses, standing close together, had protected each other, and only two were unroofed; but everywhere the trees looked like twisted poles, the streets and gardens were full of rubbish, and down by the bay the shore was strewn with the wreckage of ships; the Park behind the Fort was thick with decaying fish, which the blacks were but just now sweeping out to the water.

After Alexander had ascertained that Mr. Mitchell's house was quite unharmed, although a neighbour had lost half a roof and been deluged in consequence, he walked out Company Street to see how it had fared with Hugh Knox. That worthy gentleman was treating his battered nerves with weak whiskey and water when he caught sight of Alexander through the library window. He gave a shout that drew an exasperated groan through the ceiling, flung open the door, and clasped his beloved pupil in his arms.

"I knew you were safe, because you are you, although I've been afraid to ask if you were dead or alive. Cruger sent out three others to warn the planters, and they've all been brought home, one dead, one maimed, one with chills and fever and as mad as a March hare. Good God! what a visitation! I'd rather have been on a moving bog in Ireland. You wouldn't have ridden out in that hurricane if I'd got you, not if I'd been forced to tie you up. Fancy your being here alive, and not even a cold in your head! But you've a grand destiny to work out, and the hurricane--which I believe was the Almighty in a temper--knew what it was about. Now tell me your experience. I'm panting to tell you mine. I've not had a soul to talk to since the hour it started. The Missis behaved like a Trojan while it lasted, then went to bed, and hasn't spoken to me since; and as for everyone else in Christianstadt--well, they've retired to calm their nerves in the only way,--prayer first and whiskey after."

Alexander took possession of his own easy-chair and looked gratefully around the room. The storm had not disturbed it, neither had a wench's duster. Since his mother's death he had loved this room with a more grateful affection than any mortal had inspired, well as he loved his aunt, Hugh Knox, and Neddy. But the room did not talk, and the men who had written the great books which made him indifferent to his island prison for days and weeks at a time, were dead, and their selfishness was buried with them.

Meanwhile Knox, forgetting his desire to hear the experience of his guest, was telling his own. It was sufficiently thrilling, but not to be compared with that of the planter's; and when he had finished, Alexander began with some pride to relate his impressions of the storm. He, too, had not talked for three days; his heart felt warm again; and in the familiar comfortable room, the terrible picture of the hurricane seemed to spring sharp and vivid from his memory; he had recalled it confusedly hitherto, and made no effort to live it again. Knox leaned forward eagerly, dropping his pipe; Alexander talked rapidly and brilliantly, finally springing to his feet, and concluding with an outburst so eloquent that his audience cowered and covered his face with his hands. For some moments Knox sat thinking, then he rose and pushed a small table in front of Alexander, littering it with pencils and paper, in his untidy fashion.

"My boy," he said, "you're still hot with your own eloquence. Before you cool off, I want you to write that down word for word as you told it to me. If it twisted my very vitals, it will give a similar pleasure to others. 'Twould be selfish to deny them. When it's done, I'll send it to Tiebout. Now I'll leave you, and if my niggers are still too demoralized to cook supper for you, I'll do it myself."

Alexander, whose brain, in truth, felt on fire, for every nerve had leapt to the recreating of that magnificent Force that had gathered an island into the hollow of its hand, crushed, and cast it back to the waters, dashed at the paper and wrote with even more splendour than he had spoken. When he had finished, he was still so excited that he rushed from the house and walked till the hideous sights and smells drove him home. He was quivering with the ecstasy of birth, and longed for another theme, and hours and days of hot creation. But he was to be spared the curse of the "artistic temperament."

XI

The description of the hurricane went to St. Christopher by sloop two days later (there were no English papers on St. Croix), and was not heard from for two weeks. Meanwhile Alexander forgot it, as writers have a way of forgetting their infants of enthusiastic delivery. There was much to do on St. Croix. The negroes were put at once to rebuilding and repairing, and masters, as well as overlookers and agents, were behind them from morning till night. Mr. Mitchell had not returned, and Alexander was obliged to take charge of his estates. When he was not galloping from village to village and mill to mill, driving the sullen blacks before him, or routing them out of ruins and hollows, where they huddled in a demoralized stupor, he was consoling his aunt for the possible sacrifice of Mr. Mitchell to the storm. Alexander was quite confident that the hurricane had spared Tom Mitchell, whomsoever else it may have devoured, but his logic did not appeal to his aunt, who wept whenever he was there to offer his arm and shoulder. At other times she bustled about among her maids, who were sewing industriously for the afflicted.

Alexander was grateful for the heavy task Mr. Mitchell's absence imposed, for there was no business doing in Christianstadt, and his nerves were still vibrating to the storm he had fought and conquered. His rigorous self-control was gone, his suppressed energies and ambitions were quick and imperious, every vial of impatience and disgust was uncorked. As he rode through the hot sunlight or moved among the Africans, coaxing and commanding, getting more work out of them by his gay bright manner than the overlookers could extract with their whips, his brain was thumping with plans of delivery from a life which he hated so blackly that he would wrench himself free of it before the year was out if he had to ship as a common sailor for New York. It seemed to him that the vacancies in his brain ached. His imagination was hot with the future awaiting him beyond that cursed stretch of blinding water. For the first time he fully realized his great abilities, knew that he had in him the forces that make history. All the encouragement of his mother and Hugh Knox, the admiration and confidence of such men as Mr. Cruger, the spoiling of his relatives, and his easy conquest or equally flattering antagonism of the youth of the Island, had fostered his self-confidence without persuading him that he was necessarily a genius. Strong as his youthful ambitions had been, burning as his desire for more knowledge, much in his brain had been dormant, and a humorous philosophy, added to the sanguineness of youth and a deep affection for a few people, had enabled him to bear his lot with unbroken cheerfulness. But the clashing forces of the Universe had roused the sleeping giant in his brain and whirled his youth away. His only formulated ambition was to learn first all that schools could teach him, then lead great armies to battle. Until the day of his death his desire for military excitement and glory never left him, and at this time it was the destiny which heated his imagination. It seemed to him that the roar and rattle of the hurricane, in whose lead he had managed to maintain himself unharmed, were the loud prophecy of battle and conquest. At the same time, he knew that other faculties and demands of his brain must have their way, but he could only guess at their nature, and statesmanship was the one achievement that did not occur to him; the American colonies were his only hope, and there was no means by which he could know their wrongs and needs. Such news came seldom to the West Indies, and Knox retained little interest in the country where he had sojourned so short a while. And at this time their struggle hardly would have appealed to young Hamilton had he known of it. He was British by instinct and association, and he had never received so much as a scratch from the little-finger nail of the distant mother, whose long arm was rigid above her American subjects.

His deliverance was so quick and sudden that for a day or two he was almost as dazed as the Africans after the hurricane. One day Hugh Knox sent him out a copy of the St. Christopher newspaper which had published his description of the storm. With some pride in his first-born, he read it aloud to his aunt. Before he was halfway down the first column she was on the sofa with her smelling-salts, vowing she was more terrified than when she had expected to be killed every minute. When he had finished she upbraided him for torturing people unnecessarily, but remarked that he was even cleverer than she had thought him. The next morning she asked him to read it again; then read it herself. On the following day Hugh Knox rode out.

Alexander was at one of the mills. Knox told Mrs. Mitchell that he had sent a copy of the newspaper to the Governor of St. Croix, who had called upon him an hour later and insisted upon knowing the name of the writer. Knox not only had told him, but had expanded upon Alexander's abilities and ambitions to such an extent that the Governor at that moment was with Peter Lytton, endeavouring to persuade him to open his purse-strings and send the boy to college.

"He will not do all," added Knox, "and I rely upon you to do the rest. Between you, Alexander can get, first the education he wants now more than anything in life, then the chance to make a great reputation among men. If you keep him here you're no better than criminals, and that's all I have to say."

Mrs. Mitchell shuddered. "Do you think he really wants to go?" she asked.

"Do I think he wants to go!" roared Hugh Knox. "Do I think--Good God! why he's been mad to go for five years. He'd have thought of nothing else if he hadn't a will like a bar of iron made for a hurricane door, and he'd have grown morbid about it if he hadn't been blest with a cheerful and a sanguine disposition. You adore him, and you couldn't see that!"

"He never said much about it," said Mrs. Mitchell, meekly; "but I think I can see now that you are right. It will make me ill to part with him, but he ought to go, and if Peter Lytton will pay half his expenses, I'll pay the other half, and keep him in pocket coin besides. Of course Tom won't give a penny, but I have something of my own, and he is welcome to it. Do have everything arranged before my husband's return. He is alive and well. I had a letter from him by the sloop that came from St. Kitts, and he'll be here by the next or the one after."

As soon as Knox had gone Mrs. Mitchell ordered her coach and drove to Lytton's Fancy. Her love for Alexander had struggled quite out of its fond selfishness, and she determined that go to New York he should and by the next ship. She found her brother-in-law meditating upon the arguments of the Governor, and had less difficulty in persuading him than she had anticipated.

"I'm sorry we haven't sent him before," he said finally. "For if two men like Walsterstorff and Knox think so highly of him, and if he can write like that,--it gave me the horrors,--he ought to have his chance, and this place is too small for him. I'll help you to keep him at college until he's got his education,--and it will take him less time than most boys to get it,--and then he'll be able to take care of himself. If he sails on Wednesday, there's no produce to send with him to sell; but I've silver, and so have you, and he can take enough to keep him until the Island is well again. We'll do the thing properly, and he shan't worry for want of plenty."

When Alexander came home that evening he was informed that the world had turned round, and that he stood on its apex.

XII

The night before he sailed he rode out to the Grange estate. The wall of the cemetery had been repaired, James Lytton's slab was in its place, the tree had been removed, and he had rebuilt the mound above his mother as soon as the earth was firm again. There was no evidence of the hurricane here. The moon was out, and in her mellow bath the Island had the beauty of a desert. Alexander leaned his elbows on the wall and stared down at his mother's grave. He knew that he never should see it again. What he was about to do was for good and all. He would no more waste months returning to this remote Island than he would turn back from any of the goals of his future. And it mattered nothing to the dead woman there. If she had an immortal part, it would follow him, and she had suffered too much in life for her dust to resent neglect. But he passionately wished that she were alive and that she were sailing with him to his new world. He had ceased to repine her loss, much to miss her, but his sentiment for her was still the strongest in his life, and as a companion he had found no one to take her place. To-night he wanted to talk to her. He was bursting with hope and anticipation and the enthusiasm of the mere change, but he was close to melancholy.

Suddenly he bent his head. From the earth arose the golden music of a million tiny bells. They had hung rusty and warped since the hurricane, but to-night they rang again, and as sweetly as on the night, seventeen years ago, when their music filled the Universe, and two souls, whose destiny it was to bring a greater into the world, were flooded with a diviner music than that fairy melody. Alexander knew nothing of that meeting of his parents, when they were but a few years older than he was to-night, but the inherited echo of those hours when his own soul awaited its sentence may have stirred in his brain, for he stood there and dreamed of his mother and father as they had looked and thought when they had met and loved; and this he had never done before. The tireless little ringers filled his brain with their Lilliputian clamour, and his imagination gave him his parents in the splendour of their young beauty and passion. For the first time he forgave his father, and he had a deep moment of insight: one of the mysteries of life was bare before him. He was to have many of these cosmic moments, for although his practical brain relied always on hard work, never on inspiration, his divining faculty performed some marvellous feats, and saved him from much plodding; but he never had a moment of insight which left a profounder impression than this. He understood in a flash the weakness of the world, and his own. At first he was appalled, then he pitied, then he vibrated to the thrill of that exultation which had possessed his mother the night on the mountain when she made up her mind to outstay her guests. And then the future seemed to beckon more imperiously to the boy for whose sake she had remained, the radiant image of his parents melted in its crucible, and the world was flooded with a light which revealed more than the smoke of battlefields and the laurels of fulfilled ambition.

XIII

On the following day, as Alexander stood on the wharf with his tearful relatives and friends, Hugh Knox detached him from Mrs. Mitchell and led him aside.

"Alec," he said, "I've two pieces of parting advice for you, and I want you to put them into the pocket of your memory that's easiest to find. Get a tight rein on that temper of yours. It's improved in the last year, but there's room yet. That's the first piece. This is the second: keep your own counsel about the irregularity of your birth, unless someone asks you point-blank who has the right; if anyone else does, knock him down and tell him to go to hell with his impertinence. And never let it hit your courage in the vitals for a moment. You are not accountable; your mother was the finest woman I ever knew, and you've got the best blood of Britain in your veins, and not a relative in the world who's not of gentle blood. You're an aristocrat in body and brain, and you'll not find a purer in the American colonies. The lack of a priest at the right time can cause a good deal of suffering and trouble, but it can't muddy a pure stream; and many a lawful marriage has done that. So, mind you never bring your head down for a minute, nor persuade yourself that anyone has a better right to keep it up. It would be the death of you."

Alexander nodded, but did not reply. He was feeling very low, now that the hour for parting was come, for his affections were strong and tender, and they were all rooted in the Island he hated. He understood, however.

He was six weeks reaching Boston, for even the wind seemed to have had the life beaten out of it. He had a box of Knox's books, which he was to return by the Captain; and although he had read them before, he read them again, and wrote commentaries, and so kept his mind occupied for the greater part of the voyage. But an active brain, inexperienced in the world, and in no need of rest, is always bored at sea, and he grew sick of the sight of that interminable blue waste; of which he had seen too much all his life. When he had learned all there was to know about a ship, and read all his books, he burned for change of any sort. The change, when it came, was near to making an end of him: the ship caught fire, and they were a day and a night conquering the flames and preparing their philosophy to meet death; for the boats were unseaworthy. Alexander had all the excitement he wanted, for he fought the fire as hard as he had fought the hurricane, and he was delighted when the Captain gave him permission to turn in. This was his third touch-and-go with death.

He arrived in Boston late in October, and took passage immediately for New York. There had been no time to announce his coming, and he was obliged to find his own way to the house of Hercules Mulligan, a member of the West Indian firm, to whom Mr. Cruger had given him a warm letter of introduction. Mr. Mulligan, a good-natured Irishman, received him hospitably, and asked him to stop in his modest house until his plans were made. Alexander accepted the invitation, then started out in search of his friend, Ned Stevens, but paused frequently to observe the queer, straggling, yet imposing little city, the red splendour of the autumn foliage; above all, to enjoy the keen and frosty air. All his life he had longed for cold weather. He had anticipated it daily during his voyage, and, although he had never given way to the natural indolence of the Tropics, he had always been conscious of a languor to fight. But the moment the sharp air of the North had tingled his skin his very muscles seemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to become more alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious in an average temperature of eighty-five degrees, what would happen when the thermometer dropped below zero? He smiled, but with much contentment. The vaster the capacity for study, the better; as for his ambitions, they could rest until he had finished his education. Now that his feet were fairly planted on the wide highway of the future, his impatience was taking its well-earned rest; he would allow no dreams to interfere with the packing of his brain.

It was late in the afternoon, and the fashionable world was promenading on lower Broadway and on the Battery by the Fort. It was the first time that Alexander had seen men in velvet coats, or women with hoopskirts and hair built up a foot, and he thought the city, with its quaint Dutch houses, its magnificent trees, and these brilliant northern birds, quite like a picture book. They looked high-bred and intelligent, these animated saunterers, and Alexander regarded the women with deep inquisitiveness. Women had interested him little, with the exception of his mother, who he took for granted _sui generis_. The sisters of his friends were white delicate creatures, languid and somewhat affected; and he had always felt older than either of his aunts. In consequence, he had meditated little upon the sex to which poets had formed a habit of writing sonnets, regarding them either as necessary appendages or creatures for use. But these alert, dashing, often handsome women, stirred him with a new gratitude to life. He longed for the day when he should have time to know them, and pictured them gracing the solid home-like houses on the Broadway, and in the fine grounds along the river front, where he strayed alter a time, having mistaken the way to King's College. He walked back through Wall Street, and his enthusiasm was beginning to ebb, he was feeling the first pangs of a lonely nostalgia, when he almost ran into Ned Stevens's arms. It was four years since they had met. Stevens had grown a foot and Alexander a few inches, but both were boyish in appearance still and recognized each other at once.

"When I can talk," exclaimed Stevens, "when I can get over my amazement--I thought at first it was my double, come to tell me something was wrong on the Island--I'll ask you to come to Fraunces' Tavern and have a tankard of ale. It's healthier than swizzle."

"That is an invitation, Neddy," cried Alexander, gaily. "Initiate me at once. I've but a day or two to play in, but I must have you for playfellow."

They dined at Fraunces' Tavern and sat there till nearly morning. Alexander had much to tell but more to hear, and before they parted at Mr. Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had patiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, that account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens told it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested that he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his friend's opinion that the Colonials were in the right.

"Did I have the time, I should study the history of the colonies from the day they built their first fort," he said. "Your story is picturesque, but it does not convince me that they have all the right on their side. England--"

"England is a tyrannical old fool," young Stevens was beginning, heatedly, when a man behind arose and clapped a hand over his mouth.

"There are three British officers at the next table," he said. "We don't want any more rows. One too many, and God knows what next."

Stevens subsided, but Alexander's nostrils expanded. Even the mental atmosphere of this brilliant North was full of electricity.

The next day he presented to Dr. Rogers and Dr. Mason the letters which Hugh Knox had given him. He interested them at once, and when he asked their advice regarding the first step he should take toward entering college, they recommended Francis Barber's Grammar School, at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Stevens had suggested the same institution, and so did other acquaintances he made during his brief stay in the city which was one day to be christened by angry politicians, "Hamiltonopolis." Early in the following week he crossed to New Jersey and rode through the forests to the village, with its quaint streets and handsome houses, "the Burial Yard Lot," beside the main thoroughfare of the proud little hamlet, and Mr. Barber's Grammar School at its upper end. Hamilton was accepted immediately, but where to lodge was a harassing question. The only rooms for hire were at the tavern, where permanent lodgement would be intolerable. When he presented a letter to Mr. Boudinot, which Mr. Cruger had given him, the problem was solved at once. Mr. Boudinot, one of the men of his time, had a spacious and elegant house, set amidst gardens, lawns, and forest trees; there were many spare bedrooms, and he invited Hamilton to become a member of his family. The invitation was given as a matter of course, and Hamilton accepted it as frankly. All the pupils who were far from home visited in the neighbourhood. Liberty Hall, on the Springfield turnpike, was finishing when Hamilton arrived. When the family was installed and he presented his letter to its owner, William Livingston, he received as pressing an invitation as Mr. Boudinot's, and divided his time between the two houses.

Mr. Boudinot was a large man, with a long nose and a kindly eye, who was deeply attached to his children. Susan was healthy, pretty, lively, and an ardent young patriot. The baby died, and Hamilton, having offered to sit up with the little body, entertained himself by writing an appropriate poem, which was long treasured by Mr. Boudinot.

At Liberty Hall life was even more interesting. William Livingston was one of the ablest lawyers, most independent thinkers, and ardent republicans of the unquiet times. Witty and fearless, he had for years made a target of kingly rule; his acid cut deep, doing much to weaken the wrong side and encourage the right. His wife was as uncompromising a patriot as himself; his son, Brockholst, and his sprightly cultivated daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of political discussion, and in constant association with the best intellects of the day. Sarah, the beauty, was engaged to John Jay, already a distinguished lawyer, notoriously patriotic and high-minded. He was a handsome man, with his dark hair brushed forward about his face, his nobility and classic repose of feature. Mr. Livingston wore his hair in a waving mass, as long as he had any. His nose was large and sharp, and he had a very disapproving eye. He took an immediate liking to young Hamilton, however, and his hospitality was frank and delightful. Brockholst and Alexander liked and admired each other in those days, although they were to become bitter enemies in the turbulent future. As for the lively bevy of women, protesting against their exile from New York, but amusing themselves, always, they adopted "the young West Indian." The delicate-looking boy, with his handsome sparkling face, his charming manners, and gay good humour captivated them at once; and he wrote to Mrs. Mitchell that he was become shockingly spoiled. When Mr. Livingston discovered that his brain and knowledge were extraordinary, he ceased at once to treat him as a fascinating boy, and introduced him to the men who were constantly entertained at his house: John Jay, James Duane, Dr. Witherspoon, President of Princeton; and members of the Morris, Schuyler, Ogden, Clinton, and Stockton families. The almost weekly conversation of these men contributed to the rapid maturing of Hamilton's mind. His recreation he found with the young women of the family, and their conversation was not always political. Sarah Livingston, beautiful, sweet, and clever, was pensively in love; but Kitty and Susan were not, and they were handsome and dashing. They were sufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that he was in love with each in turn; and if he was constant to either, it was to Kitty, who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of her sex. But they did not interrupt the course of his studies; and in the dawn, when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficult task for the day, not a living face haunted the tombstones.

And when winter came and he walked the vast black forests alone, the snow crunching under his feet, the blood racing in his body, a gun on his shoulder, lest he meet a panther, or skated till midnight under the stars, a crystal moon illuminating the dark woods on the river's edge, the frozen tide glittering the flattering homage of earth, he felt so alive and happy, so tingling and young and primeval, that had his fellow-inhabitants flown to the stars he would not have missed them. Until that northern winter embraced and hardened him, quickening mind and soul and body, crowding the future with realized dreams, he never had dared to imagine that life could be so fair and beautiful a thing.

On stormy winter nights, when he roasted chestnuts or popped corn in the great fireplace of Liberty Hall, under the tuition of all the Livingston girls, Sarah, Susan, Kitty, and Judith, he felt very sociable indeed; and if his ears, sometimes, were soundly boxed, he looked so penitent and meek that he was contritely rewarded with the kiss he had snatched.

The girls regarded him as a cross between a sweet and charming boy to be spoiled--one night, when he had a toothache, they all sat up with him--and a phenomenon of nature of which they stood a trifle in awe. But the last was when he was not present and they fell to discussing him. And with them, as with all women, he wore, because to the gay vivacity and polished manners of his Gallic inheritance he added the rugged sincerity of the best of Britons; and in the silences of his heart he was too sensible of the inferiority of the sex, out of which, first and last, he derived so much pleasure, not to be tender and considerate of it always.

Before the year of 1773 was out Mr. Barber pronounced him ready for college, and, his choice being Princeton, he presented himself to Dr. Witherspoon and demanded a special course which would permit him to finish several years sooner than if he graduated from class to class. He knew his capacity for conquering mental tasks, and having his own way to make in the world, had no mind to waste years and the substance of his relatives at college. Dr. Witherspoon, who had long been deeply interested in him, examined him privately and pronounced him equal to the heavy burden he had imposed upon himself, but feared that the board of trustees would not consent to so original a plan. They would not. Hamilton, nothing daunted, applied to King's College, and found no opposition there. He entered as a private student, attached to no particular class, and with the aid of a tutor began his customary annihilation of time. Besides entering upon a course of logic, ethics, mathematics, history, chronology, rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, all the modern languages, and Belles Lettres, he found time to attend Dr. Clossy's lectures on anatomy, with his friend Stevens, who was studying medicine as a profession.

King's was a fine building facing the North River and surrounded by spacious grounds shaded by old sycamores and elms. There were many secluded corners for thought and study. A more favourite resort of Alexander's was Batteau Street, under whose great elms he formed the habit of strolling and muttering his lessons, to the concern of the passer-by. In his hours of leisure he rollicked with Stevens and his new friends, Nicolas Fish and Robert Troup. The last, a strong and splendid specimen of the young American collegian, had assumed at once the relation of big brother to the small West Indian, but was not long discovering that Hamilton could take care of himself; was flown at indeed by two agile fists upon one occasion, when protectiveness, in Alexander's measurement, rose to interference. But they formed a deep and lifelong friendship, and Troup, who was clever and alert, without brilliancy, soon learned to understand Hamilton, and was not long recognizing potentialities of usefulness to the American cause in his genius.

It was Troup who took him for his first sail up the Hudson, and except for the men who managed the boat, they went alone. Troup was a good listener, and for a time Hamilton chattered gaily as the boat sped up the river, jingling rhymes on the great palisades, which looked like the walls of some Brobdingnagian fortress, and upon the gorgeous masses of October colouring swarming over the perpendicular heights of Jersey and the slopes and bluffs of New York. It was a morning, and a piece of nature, to make the quicksilver in Hamilton race. The arch was blue, the tide was bluer, the smell of salt was in the keen and frosty air. Two boats with full white sails flew up the river. On either bank the primeval forest had burst in a night into scarlet and gold, pale yellow and crimson, bronze, pink, the flaming hues of the Tropics, and the delicate tints of hot-house roses. Hamilton had never seen such a riot of colour in the West Indies. They passed impenetrable thickets close to the water's edge, ravines, cliffs, irregular terraces on the hillside, gorges, solitary heights, all flaunting their charms like a vast booth which has but a day in which to sell its wares. They sped past the beautiful peninsula, then the lawns of Philipse Manor. Hamilton stepped suddenly to the bow of the boat and stood silent for a long while.

The stately but narrow end of the Hudson was behind; before him rolled a wide and ever widening majestic flood, curving among its hills and palisades, through the glory of its setting and the soft mists of distance, until the far mountains it clove trembled like a mirage. The eye of Hamilton's mind followed it farther and farther yet. It seemed to him that it cut the world in two. The sea he had had with him always, but it had been the great chasm between himself and life, and he had often hated it. This mighty river, haughty and calm in spite of the primeval savagery of its course, beat upon the gates of his soul, beat them down, filled him with a sense of grandeur which made him tremble. He had a vision of the vastness and magnificence of the New World, of the great lonely mountains in the North, with their countless lakes hidden in the immensity of a trackless forest, of other mountain ranges equally wild and lonely, cutting the monotony of plains and prairies, and valleys full of every delight. All that Hamilton had read or heard of the immense area beyond or surrounding the few cities and hamlets of the American colonies, flew to coherence, and he had a sudden appreciation of the stupendousness of this new untravelled world, understood that with its climate, fertility, and beauty, its large nucleus of civilization, its destiny must be as great as Europe's, nor much dissimilar, no matter what the variance of detail. The noblest river in the world seemed to lift its voice like a prophet, and the time came--after his visit to Boston--when Hamilton listened to it with a thrill of impatient pride and white-hot patriotism. But to-day he felt only the grandeur of life as he never had felt it before, felt his soul merge into this mighty unborn soul of a nation sleeping in the infinity, which the blue flood beneath him spoke of, almost imaged; with no premonition that his was the destiny to quicken that soul to its birth.

* * * * *

While on the ship, Alexander had written to his father, asking for news of him and telling of the change in his own fortunes. James Hamilton had replied at once, gratefully, but with melancholy; by this time he knew himself to be a failure, although he was now a planter in a small way. Alexander's letter, full of the hope and indomitable spirit of youth, interested as keenly as it saddened him. He recalled his own high courage and expectant youth, and wondered if this boy had stronger mettle than his own equipment. Then he remembered Rachael Levine and hoped. He lived to see hope fulfilled beyond any achievement of his imagination, although the correspondence, brisk for a time, gradually subsided. From Hugh Knox and Mrs. Mitchell Alexander heard constantly, and it is needless to state that his aunt kept him in linen which was the envy of his friends. His beruffled shirts and lace stocks were marvels, and if he was an exquisite in dress all his life, it certainly was not due to after-thought. Meanwhile, he lodged with the family of Hercules Mulligan, and wrote doggerel for their amusement in the evening. Troup relates that Hamilton presented him with a manuscript of fugitive poetry, written at this period. Mercifully, Troup lost it. Hamilton has been peculiarly fortunate in this respect. He lies more serenely in his grave than most great men.

When he was not studying, or joking, or rhyming, during those two short years of college life, he read: Cudworth's "Intellectual System," Hobbes's "Dialogues," Bacon's "Essays," Plutarch's "Morals," Cicero's "De Officiis," Montaigne's "Essays," Rousseau's "Émile," Demosthenes's "Orations," Aristotle's "Politics," Ralt's "Dictionary of Trade," and the "Lex Mercatoria."

He accomplished his mental feats by the--to him--simple practice of keeping one thing before his mind at a time, then relegating it uncompromisingly to the background; where, however, it was safe in the folds of his memory. What would have sprained most minds merely stimulated his, and never affected his spirits nor his health, highly as nature had strung his nerves. He was putting five years college work into two, but the effect was an expansion and strengthening of the forces in his brain; they never weakened for an instant.

XIV

In the spring of 1774 Hamilton visited Boston during a short holiday. His glimpse of this city had been so brief that it had impressed his mind but as a thing of roofs and trees, a fantastic woodland amphitheatre, in whose depths men of large and solemn mien added daily to the sum of human discomfort. He returned to see the important city of Boston, but with no overwhelming desire to come in closer contact with its forbidding inhabitants. He quickly forgot the city in what those stern sour men had to tell him. For to them he owed that revelation of the tragic justice of the American cause which enabled him to begin with the pen his part in the Revolution, forcing the crisis, taking rank as a political philosopher when but a youth of seventeen; instead of bolting from his books to the battlefield at the first welcome call to arms. Up to this time he had adhered to his resolution to let nothing impede the progress of his education, to live strictly in the hour until the time came to leave the college for the world. Therefore, although he had heard the question of Colonies versus Crown argued week after week at Liberty Hall, and at the many New York houses where he dined of a Sunday with his friends, Stevens, Troup, and Fish, he had persistently refused to study the matter: there were older heads to settle it and there was only one age for a man's education. Moreover, he had grown up with a deep reverence for the British Constitution, and his strong aristocratic prejudices inclined him to all the aloofness of the true conservative. So while the patriots and royalists of King's were debating, ofttimes concluding in sequestered nooks, Hamilton remained "The young West Indian," an alien who cared for naught but book-learning, walking abstractedly under the great green shade of Batteau Street while Liberty Boys were shouting, and British soldiers swaggered with a sharp eye for aggression. This period of philosophic repose in the midst of electric fire darting from every point in turn and sometimes from all points at once, endured from the October of his arrival to its decent burial in Boston shortly after his seventeenth birthday.

Boston was sober and depressed, stonily awaiting the vengeance of the crown for her dramatic defiance in the matter of tea. Even in that rumbling interval, Hamilton learned, the Committee of Correspondence, which had directed the momentous act, had been unexcited and methodical, restraining the Mohawks day after day, hoping until the last moment that the Collector of Customs would clear the ships and send the tea whence it came. Hamilton heard the wrongs of the colonies discussed without any of the excitement or pyrotechnical brilliancy to which he had become accustomed. New York was not only the hot-bed of Toryism, but even such ardent Republicans as William Livingston, George Clinton, and John Jay were aristocrats, holding themselves fastidiously aloof from the rank and file that marched and yelled under the name of Sons of Liberty. To Hamilton the conflict had been spectacular rather than real, until he met and moved with these sombre, undemonstrative, superficially unpleasing men of Boston; then, almost in a flash, he realized that the colonies were struggling, not to be relieved of this tax or that, but for a principle; realized that three millions of people, a respectable majority honourable, industrious, and educated, were being treated like incapables, apprehensive of violence if they dared to protest for their rights under the British Constitution. Hamilton also learned that Boston was the conspicuous head and centre of resistance to the crown, that she had led the colonies in aggressiveness since the first Stamp Act of 1765 had shocked them from passive subjects into dangerous critics. He had letters which admitted him to clubs and homes, and he discussed but one subject during his visit. There were no velvet coats and lace ruffles here, except in the small group which formed the Governor's court. The men wore dun-coloured garments, and the women were not much livelier. It was, perhaps, as well that he did not see John Hancock, that ornamental head-piece of patriotic New England, or the harmony of the impression might have been disturbed; but, as it was, every time he saw these men together, whether sitting undemonstratively in Faneuil Hall while one of their number spoke, or in church, or in groups on Boston Common, it was as if he saw men of iron, not of flesh and blood. Every word they uttered seemed to have been weighed first, and it was impossible to consider such men giving their time and thought, making ready to offer up their lives, to any cause which should not merit the attention of all men. Although Hamilton met many of them, they made no individual impression on him; he saw them only as a mighty brain, capable of solving a mighty question, and of a stern and bitter courage.

He returned to New York filled with an intense indignation against the country which he had believed too ancient and too firm in her highest principles to make a colossal mistake, and a hot sympathy for the colonists which was not long resolving itself into as burning a patriotism as any in the land. It was not in him to do anything by halves, it is doubtful if he ever realized the half-hearted tendency of the greater part of mankind. He studied the question from the first Stamp Act to the Tea Party. The day he was convinced, he ceased to be a West Indian. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in behalf of the country for which he conceived a romantic passion, which satisfied other wants of his soul, but he began at once on a course of reading which should be of use to her when she was free to avail herself of patriotic thinkers. He also joined the debating club of the college. His abrupt advent into this body, with his fiery eloquence and remarkable logic, was electrical. In a day he became the leader of the patriot students. There were many royalists in King's, and the president, Dr. Myles Cooper, was a famous old Tory. He looked upon this influential addition to the wrong side with deep disfavour, and when he discovered that the most caustic writer of Holt's Whig newspaper, who had carved him to the quick and broken his controversial lances again and again, was none other than his youngest and most revolutionary pupil, his wrath knew no bounds.

With the news of the order to close the port of Boston, the wave of indignation in the colonies rose so high that even the infatuated clergy wriggled. Philadelphia went so far as to toll her muffled bells for a day, and as for New York, then as now, the nerve-knot of the country, she exploded. The Sons of Liberty, who had reorganized after the final attempt of England to force tea on the colonies, paraded all day and most of the night, but were, as yet, more orderly than the masses, who stormed through the streets with lighted torches, shrieking and yelling and burning the king and his ministers in effigy.

The substantial citizens also felt that the time was come to prepare for the climax toward which their fortunes were hastening. That spiteful fist would be at their own skulls next, beyond a doubt. The result of a long and hot debate in the Exchange between the Sons of Liberty and the more conservative patriots was an agreement to call a Congress of the Colonies. The contest over the election of delegates was so bitter, however, the Committee of the Assembly, which was largely ministerial, claiming the right to nomination, that it was determined to submit the question to the people at large.

XV

In the early morning Hamilton still sauntered beneath the college trees or those of Batteau Street, pondering on his studies, and abstracting himself from the resting city, but in the evenings and during half the night he inhaled the hot breath of rebellion; and the flaring torches, the set angry faces, the constant shouting, the frightened pallor of the women at the windows of the great houses on the line of march, the constant brawls with British soldiers, stormed the curb he had put on his impatient spirit. He realized that the colonies were not yet prepared to fight, and he had no thought of doing anything rash, but it was his propensity to do a thing at once if it were to be done at all, and this last indignity should result in something except talk. He was present at the meeting in the Exchange and listened carefully to all that was said, feeling that he could add to that whirlwind of ideas, but forbearing on account of his youth. His mind, by now, was so mature that he reminded himself, with some difficulty, that he was but seventeen. He was as lively and as happy as ever, but that was temperamental and would endure through all things; mentally he had no youth in him, had had little since the day he began to ask questions.

The meeting in the Fields--at which it was hoped to effect a choice of delegates by the people at large--was called for the 6th of July, and a great multitude assembled. Alexander McDougall, the first patriot to have suffered imprisonment at the hands of the Tyrant, presided, and celebrated speakers harangued. It was here that Hamilton's impatience got rid of its curb. He heard much that was good, more that was bad, little that was new; and he found the radicals illogical and the conservatives timid. Nicolas Fish and Robert Troup pushed their way through the crowd to where Hamilton stood, his uplifted face expressing his thoughts so plainly to those who knew him that these friends determined to force him to the platform.

At first he protested; and in truth, the idea, shaping concretely, filled his very legs with terror; but the young men's insistence, added to his own surging ideas, conquered, and he found himself on the platform facing a boundless expanse of three-cornered hats. Beneath were the men who represented the flower as well as the weeds of the city, all dominated by the master passion of the civilized world. There was little shade in the Fields and the day was hot. It was a crowded, uncomfortable, humid mass whose attention he was about to demand, and their minds were already weary of many words, their calves of the ruthless mosquito. They stared at Hamilton in amazement, for his slender little figure and fair curling hair, tied loosely with a ribbon, made him look a mere boy, while his proud high-bred face, the fine green broadcloth of his fashionably cut garments, the delicate lawn of his shirt and the profusion of lace with which it was trimmed, particularly about his exquisite hands, gave him far more the appearance of a court favourite than a champion of liberty. Some smiled, others grunted, but all remained to listen, for the attempt was novel, and he was beautiful to look upon.

For a moment Hamilton felt as if the lower end of his heart had grown wings, and he began falteringly and in an almost inaudible voice. Pride hastened to his relief, however, and his daily debates in college had given him assurance and address. He recovered his poise, and as ideas swam from his brain on the tide of a natural eloquence, he forgot all but the great principle which possessed him in common with that jam of weary men, the determination to inspire them to renewed courage and greater activity. He rehearsed their wrongs, emphasized their inalienable rights under the British Constitution--from which the ministerial party and a foolish sovereign had practically divorced them. He insisted that the time had come in their history to revert to the _natural_ rights of man--upon which all civil rights were founded--since they were no longer permitted to lead the lives of self-respecting citizens, pursuing the happiness which was the first instinct of the human intelligence; they had been reduced almost to the level of their own slaves, who soon would cease to respect them.

He paused so abruptly that the crowd held its breath. Then his ringing thrilling voice sounded the first note of the Revolution. "It is war!" he cried. "It is war! It is the battlefield or slavery!"

When the deep roar which greeted the startling words had subsided, he spoke briefly of their immense natural advantages, in the event of war, the inability of England to gain any permanent advantage, and finally of the vast resources of the country, and its phenomenal future, when the "waves of rebellion, sparkling with fire, had washed back to the shores of England the wrecks of her power, her wealth, and her glory."

His manner was as fiery and impetuous as his discourse was clear, logical, and original. The great crowd was electrified. It was as if a blade of lightning had shot down from the hot blue sky to illuminate the doubting recesses of their understandings. They murmured repeatedly "It is a collegian," "a collegian," and they thundered their applause when he finished.

Troup and Fish bore him off in triumph to Fraunces' Tavern, where Stevens joined them immediately, hot, but exultant.

"I've just passed our president, looking like an infuriated bumblebee," he cried. "I know he heard your speech from some hidden point of vantage. It was a great speech, Alec. What a pity Hugh Knox, Mr. Lytton, and Benny Yard were not there to hear. I'll write them about it to-night, for St. Croix ought to burn a bonfire for a week. It was a hurricane with a brain in it that whirled you straight to these shores--as opportune for this country as for your own ambitions, for, unless I'm much mistaken, you're going to be a prime factor in getting rid of these pestiferous redcoats--we've a private room, so I can talk as I please. One tried to trip me up just now, thinking I was you."

Fish leaned across the table and looked penetratingly at Hamilton, who was flushed and nervous. The young New Yorker had a chubby face, almost feminized by a soft parted fringe, but his features were strong, and his eyes preternaturally serious.

"You've committed yourself, Hamilton," he said. "That was no college play. Whether you fight or not doesn't so much matter, but you must give us your pen and your speech. I'm no idle purveyor of compliments, but you are extraordinary, and there isn't a man living can do for the cause with his pen what you can do. Write pamphlets, and they'll be published without an hour's delay."

"Ah, I see!" cried Hamilton, gaily. "I was a bit bewildered. You think my new patriotism needs nursing. 'After all, he is a West Indian, born British, brought up under Danish rule, which is like being coddled by one's grandmother. He sympathizes with us, his mind is delighted with a new subject for analysis and discourse, but patriotism--that is impossible,' Is it not true?"

"You have read my thought," said Fish, with some confusion. "And you have a great deal to occupy your mind. I never have known anyone whose brain worked at so many things at once. I am selfish enough to want you to give a good bit of it to us."

"I never was one to make fierce demonstrations," said Alexander; "but fill up another bumper--the first has calmed my nerves, which were like to jump through my skin--and stand up, and I'll drink you a pledge."

The three other young men sprang to their feet, and stood with their glasses raised, their eyes anxiously fixed on young Hamilton. They had believed him to be preparing himself for a great career in letters, and knowing his tenacity and astonishing powers of concentration, had doubted the possibility of interesting him permanently in politics. They all had brains and experience enough--it was a hot quick time--to recognize his genius, and to conceive the inestimable benefit it could confer upon the colonial cause. Moreover, they loved him and wanted to see him famous as quickly as possible.

"Stand up on the table," cried Troup. "It is where you belong; and you're the biggest man in New York, to-day." As Hamilton, although self-confident, was modest, Troup put down his bumper, seized the hero in his big arms and swung him to the middle of the table. Then the three, raising their glasses again, stood in a semi-circle. Hamilton threw back his head and raised his own glass. His hand trembled, and his lips moved for a moment without speaking, after his habit when excited.

"The pledge! The pledge!" cried Fish. "We want it."

"It is this," said Hamilton. "I pledge myself, body and soul and brain, to the most sacred cause of the American colonies. I vow to it all my best energies for the rest of my life. I swear to fight for it with my sword; then when the enemy is driven out, and all the brain in the country needed to reconstruct these tattered colonies and unify them into one great state, or group of allied states, which shall take a respectable place among nations, to give her all that I have learned, all that my brain is capable of learning and conceiving. I believe that I have certain abilities, and I solemnly swear to devote them wholly to _my country_. And I further swear that never, not in a single instance, will I permit my personal ambitions to conflict with what must be the lifelong demands of this country."

He spoke slowly and with great solemnity. The hands of the three young men shook, as they gulped down a little of the wine. Hamilton rarely was serious in manner; even when discussing literature, politics, or any of the great questions before the world, his humour and wit were in constant play, a natural gift permitting this while detracting nothing from the weight of his opinions. But his words and his manner were so solemn to-day that they impressed his hearers profoundly, and they all had a vague presentiment of what the unborn Country would owe to that pledge.

"You'll keep that, Alexander," said Fish. "Perhaps it were better for you had you not made it so strong. I burn with patriotism, but I'd not have you sacrificed--"

"I've made my vows," cried Hamilton, gaily, "and I'll not have you mention the fact again that I'm not an American born. Here's not only to liberty, but to a united people under the firmest national constitution ever conceived by man."

"Amen," said Troup, "but that's looking well ahead. Hard as it will be to get England out, it will be harder still to make New York and New England love each other; and when it comes to hitching Massachusetts and Virginia about each other's necks, I vow my imagination won't budge."

"It will come," said Hamilton, "because in no other way can they continue to exist, much less become one of the nations of the earth. This war is but an interlude, no matter how long it may take. Then will come the true warfare of this country--the Great Battle of Ideas, and our real history will begin while it is raging, while we are experimenting; and there will be few greater chapters in any country. I shall take part in that battle; how, it is too soon to know, except that for union I shall never cease to strive until it is a fact. But it has grown cooler. Let us ride up to the village of Harlem and have supper under the trees."

XVI

It was not long after this that he wrote the pamphlets in reply to the tracts assailing the Congress and aimed particularly at setting the farmers against the merchants. These tracts were by two of the ablest men on the Tory side, and were clever, subtle, and insinuating. Hamilton's pamphlets were entitled, "A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress from the Calumnies of Their Enemies," and "The Farmer Refuted; or a More Comprehensive and Impartial View of the Disputes between Great Britain and the Colonies, Intended as a Further Vindication of the Congress." It is not possible to quote these pamphlets, and they can be found in his "Works," but they were remarkable not only for their unanswerable logic, their comprehensive arraignment of Britain, their close discussion of the rights of the colonists under the British Constitution, their philosophical definition of "natural rights," and their reminder that war was inevitable, but for their anticipation of the future resources of the country, particularly in regard to cotton and manufactures, and for the prophecies regarding the treatment of the colonies by Europe. The style was clear, concise, and bold, and with a finish which alone would have suggested a pen pointed by long use.

These pamphlets, which created a profound sensation, were attributed to William Livingston and John Jay, two of the ablest men on the patriot side. That side was profoundly grateful, for they put heart into the timid, decided the wavering, and left the Tory writers without a leg to stand on. Nothing so brilliant had been contributed to the cause.

It was not long before the public had the author's name. Troup had been present at the writing of the pamphlets, and he called on Dr. Cooper, one day, and announced the authorship with considerable gusto.

"I'll not believe it," exclaimed the president, angrily; "Mr. Jay wrote those pamphlets, and none other. A mere boy like that--it's absurd. Why do you bring me such a story, sir? I don't like this Hamilton, he's too forward and independent--but I have no desire to hear more ill of him."

"He wrote them, sir. Mulligan, in whose house he lives, and I, can prove it. He's the finest brain in this country, and I mean you shall know it."

He left Dr. Cooper foaming, and went to spread the news elsewhere. The effect of his revelation was immediate distinction for Hamilton. He was discussed everywhere as a prodigy of intellect; messages reached him from every colony. "Sears," said Willets, one of the leaders of the Liberty party, "was a warm man, but with little reflection; McDougall was strong-minded; and Jay, appearing to fall in with the measures of Sears, tempered and controlled them; but Hamilton, after these great writings, became our oracle."

Congress met in May, 1775, and word having come that Chatham's conciliation bill had been rejected, and that Britain was about to send an army to suppress the American rebellion, this body assumed sovereign prerogatives. They began at once to organize an army; Washington was elected Commander-in-chief, and they ordered that five thousand men be raised to protect New York, as the point most exposed. The royal troops were expelled, and the city placed in command of General Charles Lee, an English soldier of fortune, who had fought in many lands and brought to the raw army an experience which might have been of inestimable service, had he been high-minded, or even well balanced. As it was, he very nearly sacrificed the cause to his jealousy of Washington and to his insane vanity.

Hamilton, meanwhile, published his two pamphlets on the Quebec Bill, and took part in a number of public debates. At one of these, as he rose to speak, a stranger remarked, "What brings that lad here? The poor boy will disgrace himself." But the merchants, who were present in force, listened intently to all he had to say on the non-importation agreement, and admitted the force of his arguments toward its removal, now that war practically had been declared. One of the most interesting of the phenomena in the career of Hamilton was the entire absence of struggle for an early hearing. People recognized his genius the moment they came in contact with it, and older men saw only the extraordinary and mature brain, their judgement quite unaffected by the boyish face and figure. Those who would not admit his great gifts were few, for except in the instances where he incurred jealous hate, he won everybody he met by his charming manner and an entire absence of conceit. He was conscious of his powers, but took them as a matter of course, and thought only of what he would do with them, having no leisure to dwell on their quality. In consequence, he already had a large following of unhesitating admirers, many of them men twice his age, and was accepted as the leading political philosopher of the country.

Dr. Cooper sent for him after his third pamphlet. He, too, was a patriot in his way, and although he bristled whenever Hamilton's name was mentioned, he had come in contact with too many minds not to recognize ability of any sort; he knew that Hamilton would be invaluable to the Royalist cause.

"Ask your own price, sir," he said, after suggesting the higher service to which he could devote his pen. "You will find us more liberal--" But Hamilton had bolted. It is impossible to knock down one's venerable president, and his temper was still an active member in the family of his faculties. To the numerous other offers he received from the Tory side he made no reply, beyond inserting an additional sting into his pen when writing for Holt's _Journal_. In the press he was referred to, now, as "The Vindicator of Congress," and it was generally conceded that he had done more to hasten matters to a climax, by preparing and whetting the public mind, than anyone else in America.

There is no doubt that the swiftness and suddenness of Hamilton's conversion, his abrupt descent from a background of study and alien indifference, gave him a clearer and more comprehensive view of the wrongs and needs of the colonists than they possessed themselves. They had been muttering ever since the passage of the first stamp tax, threatening, permitting themselves to be placated, hoping, despairing, hoping again. Hamilton, from the first moment he grasped the subject, saw that there was no hope in ministerial England, no hope in anything but war. Moreover, his courage, naturally of the finest temper, and an audacity which no one had ever discouraged, leapt out from that far background of the West Indies into an arena where the natives moved in an atmosphere whose damps of doubt and discouragement had corroded them for years. Even among men whose courage and independence were of the first quality, Hamilton's passionate energy, fearlessness of thought, and audacity of expression, made him remarkable at once; and they drew a long breath of relief when he uncompromisingly published what they had long agreed upon over the dining-table, or built up the doctrine of resistance with argument as powerful as it was new.

But the time rapidly approached for deeds, and Hamilton had been occupied in other ways than writing pamphlets. During the past six months he had studied tactics and gunnery, and had joined a volunteer corps in order to learn the practical details of military science. All his friends belonged to this corps, which called itself "Hearts of Oak," and looked very charming in green uniforms and leathern caps, inscribed "Freedom or Death." They soon attracted the attention of General Greene, a superior man and an accomplished officer. He took an especial fancy to Hamilton, and great as was their disparity in years, they were close friends until the General's death. It was Greene who first attracted Washington's attention to the youngest of his captains, and Hamilton was able to render the older man, whose services and talents have even yet not been properly recognized by his country, exceptional service. The company exercised in the churchyard of St. George's chapel, early in the morning; for in spite of the swarms of recruits clad in every variety of uniform, deserted houses, and daily flights of the timid into Jersey, earthworks and fortifications, college went on as usual.

It was not long before the "Hearts of Oak" had an opportunity to distinguish themselves. The provincial committee ordered them to remove the cannon stationed at the Battery. In the harbour was the British war-ship, _Asia_, which immediately sent off a boat to enquire into this proceeding. A large number of armed citizens had escorted the little corps to the Battery, and several lost their heads and fired at the boat. There was an immediate broadside from the _Asia_. Three of the militia were wounded, and one fell dead by Hamilton's side. "It is child's play to a hurricane," he thought. "I doubt if a man could have a better training for the battlefield." They removed the guns.

The result of this attack was another explosion of New York's nerves. The Sons of Liberty made it unsafe for a Tory to venture abroad. They marched through the streets shouting vengeance, burning in effigy, and making alarming demonstrations before the handsome houses of certain loyalists. Suddenly, about ten o'clock at night, they were animated by a desire to offer up Dr. Cooper, and they cohered and swarmed down toward King's. Hamilton and Troup happened to be walking in the grounds when the sudden flare of torches and the approaching tide of sound, warned them of the invasion. They ran like deer to head them off, but reached the portico only a moment ahead of the mob, which knew that it must be sudden and swift to be victorious.

"I can talk faster than you," whispered Hamilton, "I'll harangue them, and it won't take Dr. Cooper long to understand and flee through the back door--and may the devil fly away with him."

"A moment!" he cried, "I've something to say, and I may not have another chance, war is so close upon us."

"'Tis young Hamilton," cried someone in the crowd. "Well, make us a speech; we're always glad to hear you, but we'll not go home without old Cooper. Don't think it."

Hamilton never remembered what nonsense he talked that night. Fortunately words always came with a rush, and he could mix up politics, wrongs, the clergy, and patriotism, in so picturesque a jumble that an excited crowd would not miss his usual concise logic. "Do you suppose he's gone?" he whispered, pausing to take breath.

"Go on, go on," said Troup nervously, "I hear someone moving."

"Ah-h-h!"

There was a wild yell from the crowd, and a hoarse roar from above. Hamilton and Troup looked up. Dr. Cooper's infuriated visage, surrounded by a large frill, projected from his bedroom window. "Don't listen to him," he shrieked, thrusting his finger at Hamilton. "He's crazy! He's crazy!"

"The old fool," fumed Troup, "he thinks you're taking your just revenge. If I could get inside--"

Dr. Cooper was jerked back by a friendly hand and the window slammed. "Someone understands," whispered Troup, excitedly; "and they'll have him out in two minutes. Go on, for heaven's sake."

Hamilton, who had been tearful with laughter, began again:--

"I appeal to you, my friends, am I crazy?" Indignant shouts of "No! No!" "Then let me, I pray, make a few remarks on the possibility of holding New York against the advancing fleet, that you can testify to my sanity to-morrow, and save me from whatever unhappy fate this irascible gentleman has in store for me."

"Go ahead! Go ahead!" cried someone in the mob. "We won't let him touch you."

And again Hamilton harangued them, until Troup slipped round to the rear of the big building and returned with word that Dr. Cooper was safely over the back fence and on his way to the _Asia_. When Hamilton announced the flight, there was muttering, but more laughter, for the mob was in a better humour than when it came.

"Well, that silver tongue of yours did the old man a good turn to-night, but you shan't make fools of us again." And a few days later, when Alexander attempted to head off the same mob as it made for the press of Rivington, the Tory printer, they would not listen to him. But the effort raised him still higher in the estimation of the patriots, for they saw that his love of law and order was as great as his passion for war.

XVII

In January the convention of New York gave orders that a company of artillery be raised. Hamilton, through Colonel McDougall of the First New York regiment, at once applied for the captaincy, underwent an examination that convinced the Congress of his efficiency, and on the 14th of March was appointed Captain of the Provincial Company of Artillery. McDougall had already applied for "coarse blue cloth," with which to clothe in a semblance of uniform those who already had enlisted, and Hamilton took even better care of them. On May 26th he wrote a brief, pointed, and almost peremptory letter to the Congress, representing the injustice of paying his men less than the wages received by the Continental artillery, adding that there were many marks of discontent in his ranks, and that in the circumstances it was impossible for him to get any more recruits. "On this account I should wish to be immediately authorized to offer the same pay to all who may be inclined to recruit," he wrote. He then went on to demand ten shillings a head for every man he should be able to enlist, and that each man of his company be allowed a frock as a bounty.

Congress passed a resolution as soon as the letter was read, granting him all he asked for, but limiting his company to one hundred men. When it was recruited to his satisfaction, it numbered ninety-one, exclusive of himself and his four officers. Besides his Captain-Lieutenant, and first, second, and third Lieutenants, he had three sergeants, three corporals, six bombardiers, three gunners, two drummers, two fifers, a barber, and seventy-one matrosses, or assistant gunners.

He had his troubles, and Congress came to the rescue whenever it received one of his singularly unboyish letters, expressed, moreover, with little more diffidence than if he had been Commander-in-chief. But he knew what he wanted, and he never transcended courtesy; he was evidently a favourite with the Congress. On July 26th he wrote demanding a third more rations for his men, and on the 31st a resolution was passed which marked an end to the disposition to keep his little company on a level with the militia rather than with the regular army. Thereafter he had no further complaints to carry to headquarters; but he was annoyed to discover that one of his officers was a hard drinker, and that the Lieutenant Johnson who had recruited the larger number of his men before he assumed command, had disobeyed orders and enlisted them for a year instead of for the term of war.

Meanwhile, although the very air quivered and every man went armed to the teeth, if a war-ship fired a gun the streets were immediately filled with white affrighted faces; and although redoubts were building day and night, still Congress came out with no declaration, and the country seemed all nerves and no muscle. The English fleet arrived and filled the bay,--a beautiful but alarming sight. Washington came and made New York his headquarters, called for more troops, and Brooklyn Heights were fortified, lest the English land on Long Island and make an easy descent on the city.

It is doubtful if the Americans have ever appreciated all they owe to Lord Howe. He sat out in the harbour day after day, while they completed their preparations, practically waiting until they announced themselves ready to fight. But no man ever went to the wars with less heart for his work, and he put off the ugly business of mowing down a people he admired, hoping from day to day for an inspired compromise. It was not until after the Declaration of Independence by the Congress, the wild enthusiasm it excited throughout the colonies, and the repeated declination of Washington to confer with Howe as a private citizen, that our Chief received word the British Commander was landing troops on Long Island, near Gravesend.

Several thousand troops were ordered across to reinforce the Brooklyn regiments, and Hamilton's artillery was among them. He stood up in his boat and stared eagerly at the distant ridge of hills, behind which some twenty thousand British were lying on their arms with their usual easy disregard of time, faint, perhaps, under the torrid sun of August. But they were magnificently disciplined and officered, and nothing in history had rivalled the rawness and stubborn ignorance of the American troops. Hamilton had not then met Washington, but he knew from common friends that the Chief was worried and disgusted by what he had seen when inspecting the Brooklyn troops the day before. Greene, second only to Washington in ability, who had been in charge of the Brooklyn contingent, knowing every inch of the ground, was suddenly ill. Putnam was in command, and the Chief was justified in his doubt of him, for nothing in the mistakes of the Revolution exceeded his carelessness and his errors of judgement during the battle of Long Island.

There were still two days of chafing inactivity, except in the matter of strengthening fortifications, then, beginning with dawn of the 28th, Hamilton had his baptism of fire in one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Revolution.

The Americans were outgeneralled and outnumbered. Their attention was distracted by land and water, while a British detachment, ten thousand strong, crept over the ridge of hills by night, and through the Bedford Pass, overpowering the guards before their approach was suspected. At dawn they poured down upon the American troops, surprising them, not in one direction, but in flank, in rear, and in front. The green woods swarmed with redcoats, and the Hessians acted with a brutality demoralizing to raw troops. Hamilton's little company behaved well, and he was in the thick of the fight all day. The dead were in heaps, the beautiful green slopes were red, there was not a hope of victory, but he exulted that the colonies were fighting at last, and that he was acting; he had grown very tired of talking.

He was driven from his position finally, and lost his baggage and a field-piece, but did not take refuge within the redoubts until nightfall. There, in addition to fatigue, hunger, a bed on the wet ground, and the atmosphere of hideous depression which pressed low upon the new revolutionists, he learned that Troup had been taken prisoner. Then he discovered the depths to which a mercurial nature could descend. He had been fiercely alive all day; the roar of the battle, the plunging horses, the quickening stench of the powder, that obsession by the devil of battles which makes the tenderest kill hot and fast, all had made him feel something more than himself, much as he had felt in the hurricane when he had fancied himself on high among the Berserkers of the storm. In his present collapse he felt as if he were in a hole underground.

Washington arrived on the scene next morning, and for forty-eight hours he barely left the saddle, encouraging the wretched men and exercising an unceasing vigilance. For two long days they were inactive in the rain. The Chief, having assured himself that the British aimed to obtain command of the river, determined upon the retreat which ranks as one of the greatest military achievements in history. On the night of the 29th, under cover of a heavy fog, the feat of embarking nine thousand men, with all the ammunition and field-pieces of the army, and ferrying them across the East River with muffled oars, was accomplished within earshot of the enemy. Washington rode from regiment to regiment, superintending and encouraging, finally taking his stand at the head of the ferry stairs. He stood there until the last man had embarked at four in the morning. The last man was Hamilton. His was one of the regiments, and the rear one, detailed to cover the retreat, to attract fire to itself if necessary. His position was on the Heights, just outside the intrenchments, at the point closest to the enemy. For nine hours he hardly moved, his ear straining for the first indication that the British heard the soft splashing of bare feet in the mud. The fog was so thick that he could see nothing, not even the battalions of retreating Americans; the forms of his own men were vague and gray of outline. He never had fancied an isolation so complete, but his nerves stood the strain; when they began to mutter he reminded himself of Mr. Cruger's store and St. Croix. There was a false summons, and after turning his back upon his post with a feeling of profound relief, he was obliged to return and endure it for two hours longer. Did the fog lift he would never see another. It was dawn when a messenger came with the news that his turn positively had come, and he marched his men down the slope to the ferry stairs. He passed close enough to Washington to see his dejected, haggard face.

On the 15th of the following month, after much correspondence with Congress, discussion, and voting, it was determined to abandon New York City, and intrench the army on the Heights of Harlem. Hamilton was bitterly disappointed; he wanted to defend the city, and so had three of the generals, but they were overruled, and the march began on a blazing Sunday morning. It was not only the army that marched, but all the inhabitants of the town who had not escaped to the Jersey shore. The retreat was under the command of General Putnam, and guided through all the intricacies of those thirteen winding miles by his aide-de-camp, Aaron Burr. The last man in the procession was Alexander Hamilton.

"So, you're covering again, Alexander," said Fish, as he passed him on his way to his own regiment,--the New York, of which he was brigade-major. "You can't complain that your adopted country doesn't make use of you. By the way, Troup is in the Jersey prison-ship, safe and sound."

"Can't we exchange him?" asked Hamilton, eagerly, "Do you think General Washington would listen to us?"

"If we have a victory. I shouldn't care to approach him at present. God! This is an awful beginning. The whole army is ready to dig its own grave. The only person of the lot who has any heart in him to-day is little Burr. He's like to burst with importance because he leads and we follow. He's a brave little chap, but such a bantam one must laugh. Well, I hate to leave you here, the very last man to be made a target of. You won't be rash?" he added anxiously.

"No, granny," said Hamilton, whose gaiety had revived as he heard of Troup's safety. "And I'd not exchange my position for any."

"Good-by."

Handshakes in those days were solemn. Fish feared that he never should see Hamilton again, and his fear was close to being realized.

It was a long, hot, dusty, miserable march; some lay down by the wayside and died. Hamilton had been bred in the heat of the Tropics, but he had ridden always, and to-day he was obliged to trudge the thirteen miles on foot. He had managed to procure horses for his guns and caissons, but none for himself and his officers.

It was on the Hoagland farm at the junction of the Kingsbridge and Bloomingdale roads that a serious skirmish occurred, and Hamilton and his men stood the brunt of it. The tired column was almost through the pass, when a detachment of British light infantry suddenly appeared on the right. Fortunately the cannon had not entered the pass, and were ready for action. Hamilton opened fire at once. There was a sharp engagement, but the British were finally driven off. Then the defenders of the column made good their own retreat, for they knew that by now the redcoats were swarming over the island.

Toward night a cold wind and rain swept in from the ocean. When the little army finally reached Harlem Heights they were obliged to sleep on the wet ground without so much as a tent to cover them, then arise at dawn and dig trenches. But by night they were men again, they had ceased to be dogged machines: the battle of Harlem Heights had been fought and won. The British had begun the battle in the wrong place and at the wrong time, and all the natural advantages of that land of precipices, forests, gorges, wooded hills, and many ravines, were with the Americans. Again Hamilton worked in the thick of the fight during the four hours it lasted, but like everybody else he went to sleep happy.

XVIII

He rose at dawn the next morning, and rousing his men, set them at work throwing up redoubts. He was standing some distance from them, watching the sun rise over the great valley they had been forced to abandon, with its woods and beautiful homes, now the quarters of British officers, when every nerve in his body became intensely aware that some one was standing behind him. He knew that it was a man of power before he whirled round and saw Washington.

"This is Captain Hamilton?" said the Chief, holding out his hand. "General Greene spoke to me, weeks ago, about you, but I have been in no mood until to-day for amenities. I know of your part in the retreat from Long Island, and I noticed you as you passed me on the ferry stairs. What a lad you are! I am very proud of you."

"I had asked for no reward, sir," cried Hamilton, with a smile so radiant that Washington's set face caught a momentary reflection from it, and he moved a step nearer, "but I feel as if you had pinned an order on my coat."

"I have heard a great deal more about you," said Washington, "and I want to know you. Will you come up and have breakfast with me?"

"_Oh, yes, I will_," said Hamilton, with such seriousness that they both laughed. Hamilton's personal pride was too great to permit him to feel deeply flattered by the attentions of any one, but the halo about Washington's head was already in process of formation; he stood aloft, whether successful or defeated, a strong, lonely, splendid figure, and he had fired Hamilton's imagination long since. At that time he was ready to worship the great Chief with all a boy's high enthusiasm, and although he came to know him too well to worship, he loved him, save at intervals, always. As for Washington, he loved Hamilton then and there, and it is doubtful if he ever loved any one else so well. When they were alone he called him "my boy," an endearment he never gave another.

On that September morning they breakfasted together, and talked for hours, beginning a friendship which was to be of the deepest consequences to the country they both were striving to deliver.

During the following month Hamilton had much leisure, and he spent it in the library of the Morris house, which its owner, a royalist, had abandoned on the approach of the American troops, fleeing too hurriedly to take his books. The house was now General Washington's headquarters, and he invited Hamilton to make what use of the library he pleased. It was a cool room, and he found there many of the books he had noted down for future study. He also wrote out a synopsis of a political and commercial history of Great Britain. As the proclivities and furnishing of a mind like Hamilton's cannot fail to interest the students of mankind, a digression may be pardoned in favour of this list of books he made for future study, and of the notes scattered throughout his pay book:--

Smith's History of New York; Leonidas; View of the Universe; Millot's History of France; Memoirs of the House of Brandenburgh; Review of the Characters of the Principal Nations of Europe; Review of Europe; History of Prussia; History of France; Lassel's Voyage through Italy; Robertson's Charles V; Present State of Europe; Grecian History; Baretti's Travels; Bacon's Essays; Philosophical Transactions; Entick's History of the Late War; European Settlements in America; Winn's History of America.

The Dutch in Greenland have from 150 to 200 sail and ten thousand seamen.... It is ordered that in their public prayers they pray that it should please God to bless the Government, the Lords, the States, and their great and small fisheries.

Hamburg and Germany have a balance against England--they furnish her with large quantities of linen.

Trade with France greatly against England.... The trade with Flanders in favour of England.... A large balance in favour of Norway and Denmark.

Rates of Exchange with the several Nations in 52, viz.: To Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, Amsterdam, Hamburgh. To Paris--Loss, Gain.

Postlethwaite supposes the quantity of cash necessary to carry on the circulation in a state one third of the rents to the land proprietors, or one ninth of the whole product of the lands. See the articles, Cash and Circulation.

The par between land and labour is twice the quantity of land whose product will maintain the labourer. In France one acre and a half will maintain one. In England three, owing to the difference in the manner of living.

Aristotle's Politics, chap. 6, definition of money, &c.

The proportion of gold and silver, as settled by Sir Isaac Newton's proposition, was 1 to 14. It was generally through Europe 1 to 15. In China I believe it is 1 to 10.

It is estimated that the labour of twenty-five persons, on an average, will maintain a hundred in all the necessaries of life.

Postlethwaite, in his time, supposes six millions of people in England. The ratio of increase has been found by a variety of observations to be, that 100,000 people augment annually, one year with another to--. Mr. Kerseboom, agreeing with Dr. Halley, makes the number of people thirty-five times the number of births in a year.

Extracts from Demosthenes' Orations.

Philippic. "As a general marches at the head of his troops, so ought wise politicians, if I dare use the expression, to march at the head of affairs; insomuch that they ought not to wait _the event_, to know what measures to take; but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the _event_."

"Where attack him? it will be said. Ah, Athenians--war, war, itself will discover to you his weak sides, if you will seek them."

Sublimely simple. Vide Long. C. 16.

Are the limits of the several states and the acts on which they are founded ascertained, and are our ministers provided with them? What intelligence has been given to Congress by our ministers of the designs, strength by sea and land, actual interests and views of the different powers in Europe?

The government established (by Lycurgus) remained in vigour about five hundred years, till a thirst of empire tempted the Spartans to entertain foreign troops, and introduce Persian gold to maintain them; then the institutions of Lycurgus fell at once, and avarice and luxury succeeded.

He (Numa) was a wise prince, and went a great way in civilizing the Romans. The chief engine he employed for this purpose was religion, which could alone have sufficient empire over the minds of a barbarous and warlike people to engage them to cultivate the arts of peace.

Dr. Halley's Table of Observations exhibiting the probabilities of life; containing an account of the whole number of people of Breslau, capital of Silesia, and the number of those of every age, from one to a hundred. (Here follows the table with comments by A.H.)

When the native money is worth more than the par in foreign, exchange is high; when worth less, it is low.

Portugal trade--Spanish trade--Artificers--Money--Exchange--Par of exchange--Balance of trade--Manufactures--Foundry--Coin--Gold--Silver--Naval Power--Council of trade--Fishery.

Money coined in England from the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Quere. Would it not be advisable to let all taxes, even those imposed by the States, be collected by persons of Congressional appointment; and would it not be advisable to pay the collectors so much per cent. on the sums collected?

Hamilton was nineteen at this time, and while there are many instances of mental precocity in the history of mankind, it is doubtful if there is a parallel case of so great a _range_ of intellectual curiosity, or such versatility combined with pursuit of knowledge as distinct from information. But the above notes are chiefly significant as showing that long before he could have dreamed of directing the finances of the United States, while he was wild with delight at the prospect of military excitement and glory, a part of his mind was imperiously attracted to the questions which were to become identified in American history with his name.

Washington often came in and sat for an hour with him; and although they talked military science and future campaigns invariably,--for Washington was a man of little reading and his thoughts moved in a constant procession to one tune,--this was perhaps the happiest period of their intercourse. The Chief demanded nothing, and his young friend was free to give or not, as he chose. In that interval nothing gave Hamilton such pleasure as to see Washington come into the cool library, his face softening.

"You have a streak of light in you that never goes out," said the man of many burdens once. "When I catch a spark of it, I am cheered for the rest of the day. When I am close to it for a time, I can feel the iron lid on my spirits lifting as if it were on a bubbling pot. I believe you are something more than human."

During the first of these conversations Hamilton suggested the advisability of keeping up the spirits of the raw troops by drawing the enemy in separate detachments into constant skirmishes, a plan in which the Americans were sure to have every advantage; and this policy was pursued until Washington fell back into Westchester County.

The American troops under Washington numbered about nineteen thousand men, in one-third of whom the Chief felt something like confidence. Many were grumbling at the prospect of a winter in the discomforts of camp life; others were rejoicing that their time of service drew to a close; all were raw. Nevertheless, he determined to give the British battle on the shore of the Bronx River, where they were camped with the intention of cutting him off from the rest of the country.

Both armies were near White Plains on the morning of the 28th of October. Most of the Americans were behind the breastworks they had thrown up, and the British were upon the hills below, on the opposite side of the Bronx. On the American side of the stream was an eminence called Chatterton's Hill, and on the evening of the 27th Colonel Haslet was stationed on this height, with sixteen hundred men, in order to prevent the enfilading of the right wing of the army. Early the next morning McDougall was ordered to reinforce Haslet with a small corps and two pieces of artillery under Hamilton, and to assume general command.

At ten o'clock the British army began its march toward the village, but before they reached it, Howe determined that Chatterton's Hill should be the first point of attack, and four thousand troops under Leslie moved off to dislodge the formidable looking force on the height.

Hamilton placed his two guns in battery on a rocky ledge about halfway down the hill, and bearing directly upon that part of the Bronx which the British were approaching. He was screened from the enemy by a small grove of trees. The Hessians, who were in the lead, refused to wade the swollen stream, and the onslaught was checked that a bridge might hastily be thrown together for their accommodation. Hamilton waited a half-hour, then poured out his fire. The bridge was struck, the workmen killed, the Hessians fell back in a panic. Leslie appealed to the loyalty of the British, forded the river at another point, and rushed up the hill with bayonets fixed, resolved to capture the guns. But the guns flashed with extraordinary rapidity. Both the British and the watching Americans were amazed. There were no tin canisters and grape-shot in the American army, even the round shot were exhausted. Loading cannon with musket balls was a slow process; but Hamilton was never without resource. He stood the cannon on end, filled his three-cornered hat with the balls, and loaded as rapidly as had he leaped a century. His guns mowed down the British in such numbers that Leslie fell back, and joining the Hessian grenadiers and infantry, who had now crossed the stream, charged up the southwestern declivity of the hill and endeavoured to turn McDougall's right flank. McDougall's advance opposed them hotly, while slowly retreating toward the crown of the eminence. The British cavalry attacked the American militia on the extreme right, and the raw troops fled ignominiously. McDougall, with only six hundred men and Hamilton's two guns, sustained an unequal conflict for an hour, twice repulsing the British light infantry and cavalry. But the attack on his flank compelled him to give way and retreat toward the intrenchments. Under cover of a heavy rainstorm and of troops despatched in haste, he retreated in good order with his wounded and artillery, leaving the victors in possession of a few inconsiderable breastworks.

Fort Washington was betrayed, and fell on the 16th of November. Then began that miserable retreat of the American army through the Jerseys, with the British sometimes in full pursuit, sometimes merely camping on the trail of the hapless revolutionists. For Washington's force was now reduced to thirty-five hundred, and they were ragged, half fed, and wretched in mind and body. Many had no shoes, and in one regiment there was not a pair of trousers. They left the moment their leave expired, and recruits were drummed up with great difficulty. Washington was obliged to write eight times to General Lee, who was at North Castle with a considerable force, before he was able to hope for relief in that quarter.

Hamilton had a horse at times, at others not. But his vitality was proof against even those endless days and nights of marching and countermarching, through forests and swamps, in the worst of late autumn and winter weather; and he kept up the spirits of his little regiment, now reduced from bullets, exposure, and the expiration of service to thirty men. Nevertheless, he held the British in check at the Raritan River while the Americans destroyed the bridge, and when Washington, after having crossed the Delaware, determined to recross it on Christmas night and storm Trenton, he was one of the first to be chosen, with what remained of his men and guns.

As they crossed the Delaware that bitter night, the snow stinging and blinding, the river choked with blocks of ice, Hamilton for the first time thought on St. Croix with a pang of envy. But it was the night for their purpose, and all the world knows the result. The victory was followed on the 3d of January by the capture of Princeton; and here Hamilton's active military career came to an end for the present.

Well do I recollect the day [wrote a contemporary] when Hamilton's company marched into Princeton. It was a model of discipline. At their head was a boy, and I wondered at his youth; but what was my surprise, when, struck with his slight figure, he was pointed out to me as that Hamilton of whom we had heard so much.

I noticed [a veteran officer said many years after] a youth, a mere stripling, small, slender, almost delicate in frame, marching beside a piece of artillery, with a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes, apparently lost in thought; with his hand resting on a cannon, and every now and again patting it as if it were a favourite horse or a pet plaything.