ose from his chair under the
sudden recognition of what he was to expect, his legs slid forward
limply, and he turned his head toward the door. Washington suppressed a
smile, but it was long before he smiled again, Hamilton would have no
hints and innuendoes; he forced his enemy to show his hand. But although
he wrung from Jefferson his opposition to the Bank and to every scheme
the Secretary of the Treasury had proposed, he could not drag him into
the open. Jefferson was deprecating, politely determined to serve the
country in his own way, lost in admiration of this opponent's intellect,
but forced to admit his mistakes--the mistakes of a too ardent mind. The
more bitter and caustic the sarcasms that leaped from Hamilton's tongue,
the more suave he grew, for placidity was his only weapon of
self-preservation; a war of words with Hamilton, and he would be made
ridiculous in the presence of his colleagues and Washington.
Occasionally the volcano flared through his pale eyes, and betrayed such
hate and resentment that Washington elevated his hands an inch. The
President sat like a stoic, with a tornado on one side of him and a
growling Vesuvius on the other, and exhibited an impartiality, in spite
of the fact that Jefferson daily betrayed his hostility to the
Administration, which revealed but another of his superhuman attributes.
But there is a psychological manifestation of mental bias, no matter
what the control, and some men are sensitive enough to feel it.
Jefferson was quite aware that Washington loved Hamilton and believed in
him thoroughly, and he felt the concealed desire to side openly with the
Secretary to whom, practically, had been given the reins of government.
Washington, rather than show open favouritism, even to Hamilton, to whom
he felt the profoundest gratitude, would have resigned his high office;
but the desire was in his head, and Jefferson felt it. The campaign
open, he kept up a nagging siege upon Washington's convictions in favour
of his aggressive Secretary's measures, finding constant excuses to be
alone with the President. Hamilton, on the other hand, dismissed the
subject when left alone with Washington, unless responding to a demand.
He frequently remained to the midday meal with the family, and was as
gay and lively as if Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were in the limbo to
which he gladly would have consigned them. His nature was mercurial in
one, at least, of its essences, and a sudden let-do