e he despatched his note to
Dr. Hosack? Here it is:

"Mr. Burr's respectful compliments.--He requests Dr. Hosack
to inform him of the present state of General H., and of the
hopes which are entertained of his recovery.

"Mr. Burr begs to know at what hour of the day the Dr. may
most probably be found at home, that he may repeat his
enquiries. He would take it very kind if the Dr. would take
the trouble of calling on him, as he returns from Mr.
Bayard's."

On the thirteenth, the New York _Herald_ published:

"With emotions that we have not a hand to inscribe, have we
to announce the death of _Alexander Hamilton_.

"He was suddenly cut off in the forty-eighth year of his
age, in the full vigour of his faculties and in the midst of
all his usefulness."

The inquest which followed presented many and mixed views. Samuel
Lorenzo Knapp, writing in 1835, and evidently a somewhat prejudiced
friend, says that "the jury of inquest at last were reluctantly
dragooned into a return of murder."

Meanwhile, for eleven long black days, Burr stayed indoors at Richmond
Hill. He was afraid to go out, for he knew that popular feeling was,
in the main, against him. Dark times for the household gods! At last,
one starless, cloudy night, having heard of the murder verdict, he
stole away.

His faithful servant and friend, John Swartwout, went with him, and a
small barge lay waiting for him on the Hudson just below his Richmond
Hill estate, with a discreet crew. They rowed all night, and at
breakfast time, he turned up at the country place of Commodore
Truxton, at Perth Amboy.

Haggard and worn, he greeted his friend the Commodore with all his
usual _sang-froid_, and suggested nonchalantly that he had "spent the
night on the water, and a dish of coffee would not come amiss!"

He never went back to Richmond Hill to live again, though he later
returned to New York and dwelt there for many years. He went, for a
time, to Theo in the South, fearing arrest, but as a matter of fact,
verdict or no verdict, the matter of Hamilton's death was never
followed up. Burr came calmly back to the Capitol and finished his
term as Vice-president. In his farewell speech to the Senate he said
he did not remember the names of all the people who had slandered him
and intrigued against him, since "he thanked God he had no memory for
injuries!"

[Illustration: THE BUTTERICK BUILDING. A ston