[Ambrose Spencer, Attorney General of the State,—afterward Chief Justice,—who did not love him, having received the benefit of Hamilton's scathing sarcasm more than once, has this to say.] Alexander Hamilton was the greatest man this country ever produced. I knew him well. I was in situations to observe and study him. He argued cases before me while I sat as judge on the bench. Webster has done the same. In power of reasoning, Hamilton was the equal of Webster; and more than this can be said of no man. In creative power, Hamilton was infinitely Webster's superior, and in this respect he was endowed as God endows the most gifted of our race. If we call Shakspeare a genius or creator, because he evoked plays and character from the great chaos of thought, Hamilton merits the same appellation; for it was he, more than any other man, who thought out the Constitution of the United States and the details of the Government of the Union; and out of the chaos that existed after the Revolution, raised a fabric, every part of which is instinct with his thought. I can truly say that hundreds of politicians and statesmen of the day get both the web and woof of their thoughts from Hamilton's brains. He, more than any man, did the thinking of the time.

His fooling was as inimitable as his use of passion and logic, and on one occasion he treated Gouverneur Morris, who was his opposing counsel, to such a prolonged attack of raillery that his momentary rival sat with the perspiration pouring from his brow, and was acid for some time after. During his earlier years of practice, while listening to Chancellor Livingston summing up a case in which eloquence was made to disguise the poverty of the cause, Hamilton scribbled on the margin of his brief: "Recipe for obtaining good title for ejectment: two or three void patents, several ex parte surveys, one or two acts of usurpation acquiesced in for the time but afterwards proved such. Mix well with half a dozen scriptural allusions, some ghosts, fairies, elves, hobgoblins, and a quantum suff. of eloquence." Hamilton also originated the practice of preparing "Points," now in general use.

VIII

Hamilton, after the conclusion of the great libel case in the spring of 1804, returned from Albany to New York to receive honours almost as great, if less vociferous, than those which had hailed him after the momentous Convention of 1788. Banquets were given in his honour, the bar extolled him, and the large body of his personal friends were triumphant at this new proof of his fecundity and his power over the minds of men. They were deeply disturbed on another point, however, and several days after his arrival, Troup rode out to The Grange, Hamilton's country-seat, to remonstrate.

Hamilton, several years since, had bought a large tract of wooded land on Harlem Heights and built him a house on the ridge. It commanded a view of the city, the Hudson, and the Sound. The house was spacious and strong, built to withstand the winds of the Atlantic, and to shelter commodiously not only his family, but his many guests. The garden and the woods were the one hobby of his life, and with his own hands he had planted thirteen gum trees to commemorate the thirteen original States of the Union. Fortunately his deepest sorrow was not associated with this estate; Philip had fallen before the house was finished. This brilliant youth, who had left Columbia with flying honours, had brooded over the constant attacks upon his father,—still the Colossus in the path of the Democrats, to be destroyed before they could feel secure in their new possessions,—until he had deliberately insulted the most recent offender, received his challenge, and been shot to death close to the spot where Hamilton was to fall a few years later. That was in the autumn of 1801. Hamilton's strong brain and buoyant temperament had delivered him from the intolerable suffering of that heaviest of his afflictions, and the severe and unremitting work of his life gave him little time to brood. If he rarely lost consciousness of his bereavement, the sharpness passed, and he was even grateful at times that his son, whose gifts would have urged him into public life, was spared the crucifying rewards of patriotism.

As Troup rode up the avenue and glanced from right to left into the heavy shades of the forest, with its boulders and ravines, its streams and mosses and ferns, then to the brilliant mass of colour at the end of the avenue, out of which rose the stately house, he sighed heavily.

"May the devil get the lot of them!" he said.

It was Saturday, and he found Hamilton on his back under a tree, the last number of the Moniteur close to his hand, his wife and Angelica looking down upon him from a rustic seat. Both the women were in mourning, and Betsey's piquant charming face was aging; her sister Peggy and her mother had followed her son.

Hamilton had never recovered his health, and he paid for the prolonged strains upon his delicate system with a languor to which at times he was forced to yield. To-day, although he greeted the welcome visitor gaily, he did not rise, and Troup sat down on the ground with his back to the tree. As he looked very solemn, Mrs. Hamilton and Angelica inferred they were not wanted, and retired.

"Well?" said Hamilton, laughing. "What is it? What have I done now?"