denly gripped the foot-board with such force that the bed shook; her
eyes expanded with horror only, and she cowered as if a whip cracked
above her neck. Then she straightened herself, laughed aloud, and ran
out of the room. Hamilton, at the moment, was in the throes of an
excruciating spasm, and was spared this final agony in his harsh and
untimely death. Angelica was hurried from the house to a private asylum.
She lived to be seventy-eight, but she never recovered her reason.

Meanwhile, the grounds without were crowded with the friends of the
dying man,--many of them old soldiers,--who stood through the night
awaiting the end. Business in New York was entirely suspended. The
populace had arisen in fury at the first announcement on the bulletin
boards, and Burr was in hiding lest he be torn to pieces.

Hamilton slept little, and talked to his wife whenever he succeeded in
calming her. Her mental sufferings nearly deprived her of health and
reason; but she lived a half a century longer, attaining the great age
of ninety-seven. It was a sheltered and placid old age, warm with much
devotion; her mind remained firm until the end. Did the time come when
she thought of Hamilton as one of the buried children of her youth?

Troup, Fish, Wolcott, Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King, Bayard, Matthew
Clarkson, some twenty of Hamilton's old friends, were admitted to the
death room for a moment. He could not speak, but he smiled faintly. Then
his eyes wandered to the space behind them. He fancied he saw the
shadowy forms of the many friends who had preceded him: Laurens,
Tilghman, Harrison, Greene, Andre, Sterling, Duane, Duer,
Steuben,--Washington. They looked at him as affectionately as the
living, but without tears or the rigid features of extremest grief. It
is a terrible expression to see on the faces of men long intimate with
life, and Hamilton closed his eyes, withdrawing his last glance from
Morris and Troup.

Of whom did Hamilton think in those final moments? Not of Eliza Croix,
we may be sure. Her hold had been too superficial. Perhaps not even of
Elizabeth Schuyler, although he had loved her long and deeply. What more
probable than that his last hour was filled with a profound
consciousness of the isolation in which his soul had passed its mortal
tarrying? Surrounded, worshipped, counting more intimate friends
sincerely loved than any man of his time, gay, convivial, too active for
many hours of introspection, no mortal co