ortrait or name, held on high. The procession was
accompanied by a military escort; and every profession, every trade, was
represented. A large proportion of the men who marched were gentlemen.
Nicolas Fish was on the staff of the grand marshal, with six of his
friends. Robert Troup and two other prominent lawyers bore, on a
cushion, the new Constitution, magnificently engrossed. Nicolas Cruger,
Hamilton's old employer, again a resident of New York, led the farmers,
driving a plough drawn by three yoke of oxen. Baron Polnitz displayed
the wonders of the newly perfected threshing-machine. John Watts, a man
who had grown gray in the highest offices of New York, before and since
the Revolution, guided a harrow, drawn by horses and oxen. The
president, regents, professors, and students of Columbia College, all in
academic dress, were followed by the Chamber of Commerce and the members
of the bar. The many societies, led by the Cincinnati, followed, each
bearing an appropriate banner.

And in the very centre of that pageant, gorgeous in colour and costume,
from the green of the foresters to the white of the florists, was the
great Federal ship, with HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON, HAMILTON,
emblazoned on every side of it. In the memory of the youngest present
there was to be but one other procession in New York so imposing, and
that, too, was in honour of Hamilton.

He stood on a balcony in the Broadway, with his family, Madison, Baron
Steuben, and the Schuylers, bowing constantly to the salutes and cheers.
Nicolas Cruger looked up and grinned. Fish winked decorously, and Troup
attempted a salaam, and nearly dropped the Constitution. But Hamilton's
mind served him a trick for a moment; the vivid procession, with his
face and name fluttering above five thousand heads, the compact mass of
spectators, proud and humble, that crowded the pavements and waved their
handkerchiefs toward him, the patriotically decorated windows filled
with eager, often beautiful, faces, disappeared, and he stood in front
of Cruger's store on Bay Street, with his hands in his linen pockets,
gazing out over a blinding glare of water, passionately wishing for the
war-ship which never came, to deliver him from his Island prison and
carry him to the gates of the real world beyond. He had been an
ambitious boy, but nothing in his imaginings had projected him to the
dizzy eminence on which he stood to-day. He was recalled by the salute
of the Federal ship's