On the following day, as Alexander stood on the wharf with his tearfulrelatives and friends, Hugh Knox detached him from Mrs. Mitchell and ledhim aside.
"Alec," he said, "I've two pieces of parting advice for you, and I wantyou 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 lastyear, but there's room yet. That's the first piece. This is the second:keep your own counsel about the irregularity of your birth, unlesssomeone 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. Andnever let it hit your courage in the vitals for a moment. You are notaccountable; your mother was the finest woman I ever knew, and you'vegot the best blood of Britain in your veins, and not a relative in theworld 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 apriest 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 donethat. So, mind you never bring your head down for a minute, norpersuade yourself that anyone has a better right to keep it up. It wouldbe the death of you."
Alexander nodded, but did not reply. He was feeling very low, now thatthe hour for parting was come, for his affections were strong andtender, 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 hadthe life beaten out of it. He had a box of Knox's books, which he was toreturn by the Captain; and although he had read them before, he readthem again, and wrote commentaries, and so kept his mind occupied forthe greater part of the voyage. But an active brain, inexperienced inthe world, and in no need of rest, is always bored at sea, and he grewsick of the sight of that interminable blue waste; of which he had seentoo much all his life. When he had learned all there was to know about aship, and read all his books, he burned for change of any sort. Thechange, when it came, was near to making an end of him: the ship caughtfire, and they were a day and a night conquering the flames andpreparing their philosophy to meet death; for the boats wereunseaworthy. Alexander had all the excitement he wanted, for he foughtthe fire as hard as he had fought the hurricane, and he was delightedwhen the Captain gave him permission to turn in. This was his thirdtouch-and-go with death.
He arrived in Boston late in October, and took passage immediately forNew York. There had been no time to announce his coming, and he wasobliged to find his own way to the house of Hercules Mulligan, a memberof the West Indian firm, to whom Mr. Cruger had given him a warm letterof introduction. Mr. Mulligan, a good-natured Irishman, received himhospitably, and asked him to stop in his modest house until his planswere made. Alexander accepted the invitation, then started out in searchof his friend, Ned Stevens, but paused frequently to observe the queer,straggling, yet imposing little city, the red splendour of the autumnfoliage; above all, to enjoy the keen and frosty air. All his life hehad longed for cold weather. He had anticipated it daily during hisvoyage, and, although he had never given way to the natural indolence ofthe Tropics, he had always been conscious of a languor to fight. But themoment the sharp air of the North had tingled his skin his very musclesseemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to becomemore alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious in anaverage temperature of eighty-five degrees, what would happen when thethermometer 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 feetwere fairly planted on the wide highway of the future, his impatiencewas taking its well-earned rest; he would allow no dreams to interferewith the packing of his brain.
It was late in the afternoon, and the fashionable world was promenadingon lower Broadway and on the Battery by the Fort. It was the first timethat Alexander had seen men in velvet coats, or women with hoopskirtsand hair built up a foot, and he thought the city, with its quaint Dutchhouses, its magnificent trees, and these brilliant northern birds, quitelike a picture book. They looked high-bred and intelligent, theseanimated saunterers, and Alexander regarded the women with deepinquisitiveness. Women had interested him little, with the exception ofhis mother, who he took for granted sui generis. The sisters of hisfriends 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 habitof writing sonnets, regarding them either as necessary appendages orcreatures for use. But these alert, dashing, often handsome women,stirred him with a new gratitude to life. He longed for the day when heshould have time to know them, and pictured them gracing the solidhome-like houses on the Broadway, and in the fine grounds along theriver front, where he strayed alter a time, having mistaken the way toKing's College. He walked back through Wall Street, and his enthusiasmwas beginning to ebb, he was feeling the first pangs of a lonelynostalgia, when he almost ran into Ned Stevens's arms. It was four yearssince they had met. Stevens had grown a foot and Alexander a few inches,but both were boyish in appearance still and recognized each other atonce.
"When I can talk," exclaimed Stevens, "when I can get over myamazement--I thought at first it was my double, come to tell mesomething 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 atonce. I've but a day or two to play in, but I must have you forplayfellow."
They dined at Fraunces' Tavern and sat there till nearly morning.Alexander had much to tell but more to hear, and before they parted atMr. Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens hadpatiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, thataccount of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevenstold it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested thathe forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to hisfriend's opinion that the Colonials were in the right.
"Did I have the time, I should study the history of the colonies fromthe day they built their first fort," he said. "Your story ispicturesque, but it does not convince me that they have all the right ontheir 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'twant any more rows. One too many, and God knows what next."
Stevens subsided, but Alexander's nostrils expanded. Even the mentalatmosphere of this brilliant North was full of electricity.
The next day he presented to Dr. Rogers and Dr. Mason the letters whichHugh Knox had given him. He interested them at once, and when he askedtheir advice regarding the first step he should take toward enteringcollege, they recommended Francis Barber's Grammar School, atElizabethtown, New Jersey. Stevens had suggested the same institution,and so did other acquaintances he made during his brief stay in the citywhich was one day to be christened by angry politicians,"Hamiltonopolis." Early in the following week he crossed to New Jerseyand rode through the forests to the village, with its quaint streets andhandsome houses, "the Burial Yard Lot," beside the main thoroughfare ofthe proud little hamlet, and Mr. Barber's Grammar School at its upperend. Hamilton was accepted immediately, but where to lodge was aharassing question. The only rooms for hire were at the tavern, wherepermanent lodgement would be intolerable. When he presented a letter toMr. Boudinot, which Mr. Cruger had given him, the problem was solved atonce. Mr. Boudinot, one of the men of his time, had a spacious andelegant house, set amidst gardens, lawns, and forest trees; there weremany spare bedrooms, and he invited Hamilton to become a member of hisfamily. The invitation was given as a matter of course, and Hamiltonaccepted it as frankly. All the pupils who were far from home visited inthe neighbourhood. Liberty Hall, on the Springfield turnpike, wasfinishing when Hamilton arrived. When the family was installed and hepresented his letter to its owner, William Livingston, he received aspressing an invitation as Mr. Boudinot's, and divided his time betweenthe two houses.
Mr. Boudinot was a large man, with a long nose and a kindly eye, who wasdeeply attached to his children. Susan was healthy, pretty, lively, andan ardent young patriot. The baby died, and Hamilton, having offered tosit up with the little body, entertained himself by writing anappropriate poem, which was long treasured by Mr. Boudinot.
At Liberty Hall life was even more interesting. William Livingston wasone of the ablest lawyers, most independent thinkers, and ardentrepublicans of the unquiet times. Witty and fearless, he had for yearsmade a target of kingly rule; his acid cut deep, doing much to weakenthe wrong side and encourage the right. His wife was as uncompromising apatriot as himself; his son, Brockholst, and his sprightly cultivateddaughters had grown up in an atmosphere of political discussion, and inconstant association with the best intellects of the day. Sarah, thebeauty, was engaged to John Jay, already a distinguished lawyer,notoriously patriotic and high-minded. He was a handsome man, with hisdark hair brushed forward about his face, his nobility and classicrepose of feature. Mr. Livingston wore his hair in a waving mass, aslong as he had any. His nose was large and sharp, and he had a verydisapproving eye. He took an immediate liking to young Hamilton,however, and his hospitality was frank and delightful. Brockholst andAlexander liked and admired each other in those days, although they wereto become bitter enemies in the turbulent future. As for the lively bevyof women, protesting against their exile from New York, but amusingthemselves, always, they adopted "the young West Indian." Thedelicate-looking boy, with his handsome sparkling face, his charmingmanners, and gay good humour captivated them at once; and he wrote toMrs. Mitchell that he was become shockingly spoiled. When Mr. Livingstondiscovered that his brain and knowledge were extraordinary, he ceased atonce to treat him as a fascinating boy, and introduced him to the menwho 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 weeklyconversation of these men contributed to the rapid maturing ofHamilton's mind. His recreation he found with the young women of thefamily, and their conversation was not always political. SarahLivingston, beautiful, sweet, and clever, was pensively in love; butKitty and Susan were not, and they were handsome and dashing. They weresufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that hewas in love with each in turn; and if he was constant to either, it wasto Kitty, who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of hersex. But they did not interrupt the course of his studies; and in thedawn, when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficulttask for the day, not a living face haunted the tombstones.
And when winter came and he walked the vast black forests alone, thesnow crunching under his feet, the blood racing in his body, a gun onhis shoulder, lest he meet a panther, or skated till midnight under thestars, a crystal moon illuminating the dark woods on the river's edge,the frozen tide glittering the flattering homage of earth, he felt soalive and happy, so tingling and young and primeval, that had hisfellow-inhabitants flown to the stars he would not have missed them.Until that northern winter embraced and hardened him, quickening mindand soul and body, crowding the future with realized dreams, he neverhad 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 thegreat fireplace of Liberty Hall, under the tuition of all the Livingstongirls, Sarah, Susan, Kitty, and Judith, he felt very sociable indeed;and if his ears, sometimes, were soundly boxed, he looked so penitentand 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 bespoiled--one night, when he had a toothache, they all sat up withhim--and a phenomenon of nature of which they stood a trifle in awe. Butthe 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 vivacityand polished manners of his Gallic inheritance he added the ruggedsincerity of the best of Britons; and in the silences of his heart hewas too sensible of the inferiority of the sex, out of which, first andlast, he derived so much pleasure, not to be tender and considerate ofit always.
Before the year of 1773 was out Mr. Barber pronounced him ready forcollege, and, his choice being Princeton, he presented himself to Dr.Witherspoon and demanded a special course which would permit him tofinish several years sooner than if he graduated from class to class. Heknew his capacity for conquering mental tasks, and having his own way tomake in the world, had no mind to waste years and the substance of hisrelatives at college. Dr. Witherspoon, who had long been deeplyinterested in him, examined him privately and pronounced him equal tothe heavy burden he had imposed upon himself, but feared that the boardof trustees would not consent to so original a plan. They would not.Hamilton, nothing daunted, applied to King's College, and found noopposition there. He entered as a private student, attached to noparticular class, and with the aid of a tutor began his customaryannihilation of time. Besides entering upon a course of logic, ethics,mathematics, history, chronology, rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, allthe modern languages, and Belles Lettres, he found time to attend Dr.Clossy's lectures on anatomy, with his friend Stevens, who was studyingmedicine as a profession.
King's was a fine building facing the North River and surrounded byspacious grounds shaded by old sycamores and elms. There were manysecluded corners for thought and study. A more favourite resort ofAlexander's was Batteau Street, under whose great elms he formed thehabit of strolling and muttering his lessons, to the concern of thepasser-by. In his hours of leisure he rollicked with Stevens and his newfriends, Nicolas Fish and Robert Troup. The last, a strong and splendidspecimen of the young American collegian, had assumed at once therelation of big brother to the small West Indian, but was not longdiscovering that Hamilton could take care of himself; was flown atindeed by two agile fists upon one occasion, when protectiveness, inAlexander's measurement, rose to interference. But they formed a deepand lifelong friendship, and Troup, who was clever and alert, withoutbrilliancy, soon learned to understand Hamilton, and was not longrecognizing potentialities of usefulness to the American cause in hisgenius.
It was Troup who took him for his first sail up the Hudson, and exceptfor the men who managed the boat, they went alone. Troup was a goodlistener, and for a time Hamilton chattered gaily as the boat sped upthe river, jingling rhymes on the great palisades, which looked like thewalls of some Brobdingnagian fortress, and upon the gorgeous masses ofOctober colouring swarming over the perpendicular heights of Jersey andthe slopes and bluffs of New York. It was a morning, and a piece ofnature, to make the quicksilver in Hamilton race. The arch was blue, thetide was bluer, the smell of salt was in the keen and frosty air. Twoboats with full white sails flew up the river. On either bank theprimeval forest had burst in a night into scarlet and gold, pale yellowand crimson, bronze, pink, the flaming hues of the Tropics, and thedelicate tints of hot-house roses. Hamilton had never seen such a riotof colour in the West Indies. They passed impenetrable thickets close tothe water's edge, ravines, cliffs, irregular terraces on the hillside,gorges, solitary heights, all flaunting their charms like a vast boothwhich has but a day in which to sell its wares. They sped past thebeautiful peninsula, then the lawns of Philipse Manor. Hamilton steppedsuddenly 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 awide and ever widening majestic flood, curving among its hills andpalisades, through the glory of its setting and the soft mists ofdistance, until the far mountains it clove trembled like a mirage. Theeye of Hamilton's mind followed it farther and farther yet. It seemed tohim 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 hadoften hated it. This mighty river, haughty and calm in spite of theprimeval savagery of its course, beat upon the gates of his soul, beatthem 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, ofthe great lonely mountains in the North, with their countless lakeshidden in the immensity of a trackless forest, of other mountain rangesequally wild and lonely, cutting the monotony of plains and prairies,and valleys full of every delight. All that Hamilton had read or heardof the immense area beyond or surrounding the few cities and hamlets ofthe American colonies, flew to coherence, and he had a suddenappreciation of the stupendousness of this new untravelled world,understood that with its climate, fertility, and beauty, its largenucleus of civilization, its destiny must be as great as Europe's, normuch dissimilar, no matter what the variance of detail. The noblestriver in the world seemed to lift its voice like a prophet, and the timecame--after his visit to Boston--when Hamilton listened to it with athrill of impatient pride and white-hot patriotism. But to-day he feltonly the grandeur of life as he never had felt it before, felt his soulmerge into this mighty unborn soul of a nation sleeping in the infinity,which the blue flood beneath him spoke of, almost imaged; with nopremonition that his was the destiny to quicken that soul to its birth.
* * * * *
While on the ship, Alexander had written to his father, asking for newsof him and telling of the change in his own fortunes. James Hamilton hadreplied at once, gratefully, but with melancholy; by this time he knewhimself 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 highcourage and expectant youth, and wondered if this boy had strongermettle than his own equipment. Then he remembered Rachael Levine andhoped. He lived to see hope fulfilled beyond any achievement of hisimagination, although the correspondence, brisk for a time, graduallysubsided. From Hugh Knox and Mrs. Mitchell Alexander heard constantly,and it is needless to state that his aunt kept him in linen which wasthe envy of his friends. His beruffled shirts and lace stocks weremarvels, and if he was an exquisite in dress all his life, it certainlywas not due to after-thought. Meanwhile, he lodged with the family ofHercules Mulligan, and wrote doggerel for their amusement in theevening. Troup relates that Hamilton presented him with a manuscript offugitive poetry, written at this period. Mercifully, Troup lost it.Hamilton has been peculiarly fortunate in this respect. He lies moreserenely in his grave than most great men.
When he was not studying, or joking, or rhyming, during those two shortyears 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 "Emile," Demosthenes's"Orations," Aristotle's "Politics," Ralt's "Dictionary of Trade," andthe "Lex Mercatoria."
He accomplished his mental feats by the--to him--simple practice ofkeeping one thing before his mind at a time, then relegating ituncompromisingly to the background; where, however, it was safe in thefolds of his memory. What would have sprained most minds merelystimulated his, and never affected his spirits nor his health, highly asnature had strung his nerves. He was putting five years college workinto two, but the effect was an expansion and strengthening of theforces in his brain; they never weakened for an instant.