)

[Illustration: Alexander Hamilton. [TN]]

The parentage of Alexander Hamilton is given by his son and biographer
as of mingled Scottish and French ancestry--Scottish on the father's
side, Huguenot on the mother's. Students of the doctrine of temperaments
may find something to ponder over in such a fusion under the genial ray
of the southern sun. Given the key, they may unlock with it many
cabinets in the idiosyncrasy of the future Hamilton; Scottish
perseverance and integrity, French honor and susceptibility, tropical
fervor. Be that as it may, Alexander Hamilton first saw the light in the
West India island, St. Christopher, January 11, 1757. His father was a
trader or captain, sailing between the islands of the archipelago, whose
business brought him into relation with Nicholas Cruger, a wealthy
merchant of Santa Cruz, in intimate relation with New York, in whose
counting-house the son was placed at the age of twelve. He was a boy of
quick intellect, in advance of his years, and had already made much of
limited opportunities of instruction, as we may learn from an
exceedingly well-penned epistle, addressed thus early to a school-fellow
who had found his way to New York. In this remarkable letter, the boy
seems to have written with prophetic instinct. "To confess my weakness,
Ned," he says, "my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the
grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune
condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character,
to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I
shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded
as a boyish rhapsody; but all boys are not given to such rhapsodies.

The clerk had his hours for study as well as for the counting-room, and
doubtless practised his pen in composition, for we hear of his writing
an account of a fearful hurricane which visited the island, a narrative
which appears to have been published, since it attracted the attention
of the governor. These evidences of talent determined his friends to
send him to New York to complete his education. He came, landing at
Boston in the autumn of 1772, and was received at New York by the
correspondents of Dr. Knox, a clergyman who had become interested in his
welfare in Santa Cruz. He was immediately introduced to the school of
Francis Barber, at Elizabethtown, where he enjoyed the society of the
Boudinots, Livingstons, and other influential