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."