of her streets.  Those who could, followed the “Court,” and those who could not, travelled the weary distance over the corduroy roads through the forests, and over swamps and rivers, as often as circumstances would permit.  Of the former was Mrs. Croix, whose particular court protested it must have the solace of her presence in a city to which few went willingly.  Clinton heaped her with reproaches, but she argued sweetly that he was outvoted, and that she should ever go where duty called.  “She felt politics to be her mission,” and in truth she enjoyed its intrigues, the double game she played, with all her feminine soul.  Hamilton would not help himself in her valuable storehouse, but it pleased her to know that she held dangerous secrets in her hands, could confound many an unwary politician.  And she had her methods, as we have seen, of springing upon Hamilton many a useful bit of knowledge, and of assisting him in ways unsuspected of any.  She established herself in lodgings in Chestnut Street, not unlike those in which she had spent so many happy hours for two years past, inasmuch as they were situated on the first floor and communicated with a little garden.  Her removal was looked upon as quite natural, and so admirably did she deport herself that even Mrs. Washington received her in time.

Philadelphia was a larger city than New York, with wide ill-kept streets, good pavements, and many fine houses and public buildings.  Chestnut Street was the great thoroughfare, shopping district, and promenade.  It was a city renowned for social activity and “crucifying expenses.”  Naturally its press was as jubilant over the revival of its ancient splendour as that of disappointed New York was scurrilous and vindictive.  When the latter was not caricaturing Robert Morris, staggering off with the Administration on its back, or “Miss Assumption and her bastard brats,” its anti-Federal part was abusing Hamilton as the arch-fiend who had sold the country, and applying to him every adjective of vituperation that fury and coarseness could suggest.  There were poems, taunts, jibes, and squibs, printed as rapidly as the press and ingenuity could turn them out.  If our ancestors were capable of appreciating the literary excellence of their pamphleteers, as many of those who have replaced them to-day could not, it must be admitted that we do not rage and hate so violently.  The most hysteric effusions of our yellow press, or the caustic utterances of our reputable newspapers, are tame indeed before the daily cyclones of a time when everybody who did not love his political neighbor hated him with a deadly virulence of which we know little to-day.  We may be improved, merely commercialized, or more diffuse in our interests.  In those days every man was a politician first and himself after.