There was, also, some correspondence with the Congress regarding the disposition of his artillery men.  He insisted upon definite provision for them, and they were permitted to enlist in the Continental Army.  They loved him, and the final parting on March 18th, with cannon as well as men!—­made him ill for half a day.

Otherwise his life at Headquarters was very pleasant Tilghman and Meade became two of the most congenial friends he ever made.  The tavern was comfortable, and he had a room to himself for a time.  The dining room reunions were agreeable in spite of their formality.  Besides the amiable military family, and the most motherly of women, who knit him stockings and kept his wardrobe in order, there were frequent visitors.  The Livingston girls were spending the winter with their aunt, Lady Sterling, and, with their beautiful cousin, the Lady Kitty Alexander, often drove over to a five o’clock dinner or the more informal supper.  The Boudinots and Morgans, the generals in camp at Morristown and their wives, and the more distinguished officers, were frequently dined at Headquarters.  Washington sat halfway in the table’s length, with Mrs. Washington opposite.  Hamilton was placed at the head of the table on the day of his arrival, a seat he retained while a member of the family.  The Chief encouraged him to talk, and it must be confessed that he talked from the time he sat down till the meal finished.  His ideas were always on the rush, and talking was merely thinking aloud.  As he expressed himself with wit and elegance, and on subjects which interested them all profoundly, illuminating everything he touched, old men and young would lean forward and listen with respect to the wisdom of a young man who was yet an infant in the eyes of the law.  How he escaped being insufferably spoiled can only be explained by the ceaseless activity of his brain, and the fact that the essence of which prigs are made was not in him.  That he was utterly without commonplace conceit is indisputable, for he was the idol of the family.  Harrison christened him “The Little Lion,” a name his friends used for their aptest designation as long as he lived, and assumed a paternal relation which finished only with the older man’s death.  The Lady-in-chief made such a pet of him that he was referred to in the irreverent Tory press as “Mrs. Washington’s Tom-cat.”

“Alexander,” said Kitty Livingston to him, one day, “have a care.  You are too fortunate.  The jealous gods will smite you.”

But Hamilton, thinking of those terrible months in the previous year, of mental anxiety and physical hardship, when, in bitter weather, he had often gone hungry and insufficiently clothed, and of his present arduous duties, concluded there was a fine balance in his affairs which doubtless would placate the gods.

II