n,
however, and his hospitality was frank and delightful. Brockholst and
Alexander liked and admired each other in those days, although they were
to become bitter enemies in the turbulent future. As for the lively bevy
of women, protesting against their exile from New York, but amusing
themselves, always, they adopted "the young West Indian." The
delicate-looking boy, with his handsome sparkling face, his charming
manners, and gay good humour captivated them at once; and he wrote to
Mrs. Mitchell that he was become shockingly spoiled. When Mr. Livingston
discovered that his brain and knowledge were extraordinary, he ceased at
once to treat him as a fascinating boy, and introduced him to the men
who 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 weekly
conversation of these men contributed to the rapid maturing of
Hamilton's mind. His recreation he found with the young women of the
family, and their conversation was not always political. Sarah
Livingston, beautiful, sweet, and clever, was pensively in love; but
Kitty and Susan were not, and they were handsome and dashing. They were
sufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that he
was in love with each in turn; and if he was constant to either, it was
to Kitty, who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of her
sex. But they did not interrupt the course of his studies; and in the
dawn, when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficult
task for the day, not a living face haunted the tombstones.

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 Ha