The three young enthusiasts made a striking trio of contrasts as they sat one evening over their port and walnuts in a private room of a coffee-house, where they had met to discuss the problems convulsing the unfortunate country.  Madison had the look of a student, a taciturn intellectual visage.  He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision.  Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity.  Hamilton, with his fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as sweet as it was firm and humorous, made the other men look almost heavy.  Madison was carelessly attired, the other two with all the picturesque elegance of their time.

“A debt of $42,000,000,” groaned Morris, “interest $2,400,000; Robert Morris threatening to resign; delirious prospect of panic in consequence; national spirit with which we began the war, a stinking wick under the tin extinguisher of States’ selfishness, stinginess, and indifference—­caused by the natural reversion of human nature to first principles after the collapse of that enthusiasm which inflates mankind into a bombastic pride of itself; Virginia pusillanimous, Rhode Island an old beldam standing on the village pump and shrieking disapproval of everything; Jay, Adams, and Franklin, after years of humiliating mendicancy, their very hearts wrinkled in the service of the stupidest country known to God or man, shoved by a Congress not fit to black their boots under the thumb of the wiliest and most disingenuous diplomatist in Europe—­much France cares for our interests, provided we cut loose from Britain; Newburg address and exciting prospect, in these monotonous times, of civil war, while peace commission is sitting in London; just demands of men who have fought, starving and naked, for a bare subsistence after the army disbands, modest request for arrears of pay,—­on which to relieve the necessities of their families turned out to grass for seven years,—­pleasantly indorsed by the Congress, which feels safe in indorsing anything, and rejected by the States, called upon to foot the bill, as a painful instance of the greed and depravity of human nature—­there you are:  no money, no credit, no government, no friends,—­for Europe is sick of us,—­no patriotism; immediate prospects, bankruptcy, civil war, thirteen separate meals for Europe.  What do you propose, Hamilton?  I look to you as your Islanders flee to a stone house in a hurricane.  You are an alien, with no damned state roots to pull up, your courage is unhuman, or un-American, and you are the one man of genius in the country.  Madison is heroic to a fault, a roaring Berserker, but we must temper him, we must temper him; and meanwhile we will both defer to the peculiar quality of your mettle.”