n 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