thirty men. Nevertheless, he held the British in check at the Raritan
River while the Americans destroyed the bridge, and when Washington,
after having crossed the Delaware, determined to recross it on Christmas
night and storm Trenton, he was one of the first to be chosen, with what
remained of his men and guns.

As they crossed the Delaware that bitter night, the snow stinging and
blinding, the river choked with blocks of ice, Hamilton for the first
time thought on St. Croix with a pang of envy. But it was the night for
their purpose, and all the world knows the result. The victory was
followed on the 3d of January by the capture of Princeton; and here
Hamilton's active military career came to an end for the present.

Well do I recollect the day [wrote a contemporary] when Hamilton's
company marched into Princeton. It was a model of discipline. At
their head was a boy, and I wondered at his youth; but what was my
surprise, when, struck with his slight figure, he was pointed out
to me as that Hamilton of whom we had heard so much.

I noticed [a veteran officer said many years after] a youth, a mere
stripling, small, slender, almost delicate in frame, marching
beside a piece of artillery, with a cocked hat pulled down over his
eyes, apparently lost in thought; with his hand resting on a
cannon, and every now and again patting it as if it were a
favourite horse or a pet plaything.

BOOK III

THE LITTLE LION

I

Hamilton's body succumbed to the climax of Trenton and Princeton upon
months of hardship and exposure, and he was in hospital for a week with
a rheumatic fever. But Troup, whose exchange had been effected, was with
him most of the time, and his convalescence was made agreeable by many
charming women. He was not the only brilliant young man in the army, for
Troup, Fish, Burr, Marshall, were within a few months or, at most, a
year or two of his age, and there were many others; men had matured
early in that hot period before the Revolution, when small boys talked
politics, and even the women thought of little else; but Hamilton,
through no fault of his, had inspired his friends with the belief that
he was something higher than human, and they never tired of sounding his
praises. Moreover, Washington had not hesitated to say what he thought
of him, and the mere fact that he had won the affection of that austere
Chieftain was enough to give him celebr