he was well cared for, as he grew into
a handsome, strong lad--small, to be sure, but finely formed. Where he
learned to read, write and cipher we know not; he seems to have had one of
those active, alert minds that can acquire knowledge on a barren island.

When nine years old, he signed his name as witness to a deed. The
signature is needlessly large and bold, and written with careful schoolboy
pains, but the writing shows the same characteristics that mark the
thousand and one dispatches which we have, signed at bottom, "G.
Washington."

At twelve years of age, he was clerk in a general store--one of those
country stores where everything is kept, from ribbon to whisky. There were
other helpers in the store, full grown; but when the proprietor went away
for a few days into the interior, the dark, slim youngster took charge of
the bookkeeping and the cash; and made such shrewd exchanges of
merchandise for produce that when the "Old Man" returned, the lad was
rewarded by two pats on the head and a raise in salary of one shilling a
week.

About this time, the boy was also showing signs of literary skill by
writing sundry poems and "compositions," and one of his efforts in this
line describing a tropical hurricane was published in a London paper.

This opened the eyes of the mystical kinsmen to the fact that they had a
genius among them, and the elder Hamilton was importuned for money to send
the boy to Boston that he might receive a proper education and come back
and own the store and be a magistrate and a great man. No doubt the lad
pressed the issue, too, for his ambition had already begun to ferment, as
we find him writing to a friend, "I'll risk my life, though not my
character, to exalt my station."

Most great things in America have to take their rise in Boston; so it
seems meet that Alexander Hamilton, aged fifteen, a British subject,
should first set foot on American soil at Long Wharf, Boston. He took a
ferry over to Cambridgeport and walked through the woods three miles to
Harvard College. Possibly he did not remain because his training in a
bookish way had not been sufficient for him to enter, and possibly he did
not like the Puritanic visage of the old professor who greeted him on the
threshold of Massachusetts Hall; at any rate, he soon made his way to New
Haven. Yale suited him no better, and he took a boat for New York.

He had letters to several good clergymen in New York, and they proved wise
and g