in dress of their time; but while the elegance and beauty of attire sat with a peculiar fitness on Hamilton, seeming but the natural continuation of his high-bred face and easy erect and graceful bearing, Burr always looked studiously well-dressed.  In regard to their height, a similar impression prevailed.  One never forgot Burr’s small stature, and often commented upon it.  Comment upon Hamilton’s size was rare, his proportions and motions were so harmonious; when he was on the platform, that ruthless test of inches, he dominated and controlled every brain in the audience, and his enemies vowed he was in league with the devil.

Burr brought letters to General Schuyler, and was politely given the run of the library.  He and Hamilton had met casually in the army, but had had no opportunity for acquaintance.  At this time the law was a subject of common interest, and they exchanged many opinions.  There was no shock of antagonism at first, and for that matter they asked each other to dinner as long as Hamilton lived.  But Hamilton estimated him justly at once, although, as Burr was as yet unconscious of the depths of his own worst qualities, the most astute reader of character hardly would suspect them.  But Hamilton read that he was artificial and unscrupulous, and too selfish to serve the country in any of her coming needs.  Still, he was brilliant and fascinating, and Hamilton asked him to his home.  Burr, at first, was agreeably attracted to Hamilton, whose radiant disposition warmed his colder nature; but when he was forced to accept the astounding fact that Hamilton had prepared himself for the bar in four months, digesting and remembering a mountain of knowledge that cost other men the labour of years, and had prepared a Manual besides, he experienced the first convulsion of that jealousy which was to become his controlling passion in later years.  Indeed, he established the habit with that first prolonged paroxysm, and he asked himself sullenly why a nameless stranger, from an unheard-of Island, should have the unprecedented success which this youth had had.  Social victory, military glory, the preference of Washington, the respect and admiration of the most eminent men in the country, a horde of friends who talked of him as if he were a demi-god, an alliance by marriage with the greatest family in America, a father-in-law to advance any man’s ambitions, a fascination which had kept the women talking until he married, and finally a memory and a legal faculty which had so astounded the bar—­largely composed of exceptional men—­that it could talk of nothing else:  it was enough for a lifetime, and the man was only twenty-five.  What in heaven’s name was to be expected of him before he finished?  The more Burr brooded, the more enraged he became.  He had been brought up to think himself extraordinary, although his guardian had occasionally birched him when his own confidence had disturbed the peace; he was intensely proud of his military career, and aware