“I can’t remember it,” he said haughtily; “but you know who I am.  Let me pass.”  The sentry stood like a fate.

“This is ridiculous!” cried Hamilton, angrily, then the absurdity of the situation overcame him, and he laughed.  Once more he searched his brain for the countersign, which he remembered having given to little Ford just after dinner.  Mrs. Ford and her son retained two rooms in the house, and Hamilton frequently gave the youngster the word, that he might play in the village after dark.  Suddenly he saw him approaching.  He darted down the road, secured the password, and returned in triumph to the sentry.

“Sir,” exclaimed the soldier, in dismay, “is this quite regular?  Will you give me your word, sir, that it is all right?”

“I vow that no harm shall come to you,” said Hamilton.  “Shoulder your musket.”  And there the incident ended, so far as the soldier was concerned, but young Ford carried the story to Headquarters, and it was long before Hamilton heard the last of it.

There was no sleep in him that night.  He went to his office and laboured for hours over a verse which should adequately express the love consuming him, and then he awoke Laurens and talked into that sympathetic ear until it was time to break the ice and freshen himself for work.

His work that day was of a vastly different character from the impassioned trifle of the night before.  He obtained exemption from other duty, and ordered luncheon and dinner brought to his office.  One of the most remarkable examples of Hamilton’s mature genius at this age of twenty-three is his long and elaborate letter to Robert Morris on the financial condition of the country, written during the earliest period of his love for Elizabeth Schuyler.  As passionate and impatient as he was tender, alive in every part of his nature to the joy of a real affection and to the prospect of a lasting happiness, he yet was able for twelve hours at a time to shut his impending bride in the remotest cupboard of his mind, nor heed her sighs.  But there was an older love than Elizabeth Schuyler:  a ragged poverty-stricken creature by this, cowering before dangers within and without, raving mad at times, imbecile at others, filling her shattered body with patent nostrums, yet throughout her long course of futilities and absurdities making a desperate attempt to shade the battered lamp of liberty from the fatal draught.  Her name was the United States of America, and never was there a more satiric misnomer.  If the States chose to obey the requisitions of the Congress, they obeyed them; but as a rule they did not.  There was no power in the land to enforce obedience; and they hated each other.  As the Congress had demonstrated its inefficiency to the most inactive in public affairs, the contempt of the States is hardly to be wondered at.  It is not too much to say that troops were recruited by Washington’s influence alone, and kept from mutiny by his immortal magnetism.  The