but it is full of benignity.  His attitude in sitting is, by connoisseurs, esteemed graceful, and he has a method of waving his hand that announces the future orator.  He stands, however, rather awkwardly, and as his legs have not all the delicate slimness of his father’s, it is feared he may never excel as much in dancing, which is probably the only accomplishment in which he will not be a model.  If he has any fault in manners, he laughs too much.  He has now passed his seventh month.

Happy by temperament, Hamilton was at this time happier in his conditions—­barring the Receivership—­than any vague, wistful, crowded dream had ever presaged.  His wife was adorable and pretty, sprightly and sympathetic, yet accomplished in every art of the Dutch housewife; and although he was far too modest to boast, he was privately convinced that his baby was the finest in the Confederacy.  He had a charming little home, and Troup, the genial, hearty, and solid, was a member of it.  In General and Mrs. Schuyler he had found genuine parents, who strove to make him forget that he had ever been without a home.  He had been forced to refuse offers of assistance from his father-in-law again and again.  He would do nothing to violate his strong sense of personal independence; he had half of the arrears of his pay, Troup his share of the expenses of the little house.  He knew that in a short time he should be making an income.  The cleverest of men, however, can be hoodwinked by the subtle sex.  The great Saratoga estate of the Schuylers furnished the larder of the Hamiltons with many things which the young householder was far too busy to compare with his slender purse.

He heard constantly from his friends in the army, and finally was persuaded to sit for a portrait, to be the common property of six or eight of them.  Money was desperately tight, they could not afford a copy apiece, but each was to possess it for two months at a time so long as he lived; he who survived the others to dispose of it as he chose.  For Hamilton to sit still and look in one direction for half an hour was nothing short of misery, even with Betsey, Troup, and the Baby to amuse him; and only the head, face, stock, and front of the coat were finished.  But the artist managed to do himself justice with the massive spirited head, the deep-set mischievous eyes, whose lightnings never were far from the surface; the humour in the remarkable curves of the mouth, the determination and suppressed energy of the whole face.  It was a living portrayal, and Betsey parted from it with tears.  When she saw it again her eyes were dim with many tears.  The last of its owners to survive fell far into poverty, and sold it to one of her sons.  It is to-day as fresh, as alive with impatient youth and genius, as when Hamilton estimated portrait painters thieves of time.

Meanwhile a compliment was paid to him which upset his plans, and placed him for a short time in the awkward position of hesitating between private desires and public duty:  he was elected by the New York legislature, and almost unanimously, a delegate to Congress.  Troup brought him the news as he was walking on the broad street along the river front, muttering his Blackstone, oblivious of his fellow-citizens.