ood counselors. The boy was advised to take a course at the Grammar
School at Elizabethtown, New Jersey.

There he remained a year, applying himself most vigorously, and the next
Fall he knocked at the gate of King's College. It is called Columbia now,
because kings in America went out of fashion, and all honors formerly
paid to the king were turned over to Miss Columbia, Goddess of Freedom.

King's College swung wide its doors for the swarthy little West Indian. He
was allowed to choose his own course, and every advantage of the
university was offered him. In a university, you get just all you are able
to hold--it depends upon yourself--and at the last all men who are made at
all are self-made.

Hamilton improved each passing moment as it flew; with the help of a tutor
he threw himself into his work, gathering up knowledge with the quick
perception and eager alertness of one from whom the good things of earth
have been withheld.

Yet he lived well and spent his money as if there were plenty more where
it came from; but he was never dissipated nor wasteful.

This was in the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, and the Colonies were
in a state of political excitement. Young Hamilton's sympathies were all
with the mother country. He looked upon the Americans, for the most part,
as a rude, crude and barbaric people, who should be very grateful for the
protection of such an all-powerful country as England. At his
boarding-house and at school, he argued the question hotly, defending
England's right to tax her dependencies.

One fine day, one of his schoolmates put the question to him flatly: "In
case of war, on which side will you fight?" Hamilton answered, "On the
side of England."

But by the next day he had reasoned it out that if England succeeded in
suppressing the rising insurrection she would take all credit to herself;
and if the Colonies succeeded there would be honors for those who did the
work. Suddenly it came over him that there was such a thing as "the divine
right of insurrection," and that there was no reason why men living in
America should be taxed to support a government across the sea. The wealth
produced in America should be used to develop America.

He was young, and burning with a lofty ambition. He knew, and had known
all along, that he would some day be great and famous and powerful--here
was the opportunity.

And so, next day, he announced at the boarding-house that the eloquence
and logic