Betsey, who had not been well for some time, went to the northern forests of her old home to strive for “spring” and colour.  She took the children with her, and Hamilton, who hated to live alone, filled his deserted rooms with Troup, Fish, and Baron Steuben, whose claims he had been pressing upon Congress for years, practically supporting him meanwhile.  The old soldier felt keenly the ingratitude of the country he had served, but in time it made him ample compensation; meanwhile the devotion of a few friends, and the lionizing of society, helped him to bear his lot with considerable fortitude.  He spent hours in the nursery of the little Hamiltons, and was frequently seen in the Broadway with one in his arms and the other three attached to his person.

All the talk was of Washington and the first administration, Hamilton having carried his point in Congress that New York should be the temporary seat of government; there was jealousy and wrangling over this, as over most other matters involving state pride, but Hamilton believed that should the prize fall to Philadelphia, she would not relinquish it as lightly as New York, which geographically was the more unfit for a permanent gathering, and that the inconvenience to which most of the members, in those days of difficult travel over a vast area, would be subjected, would force them the sooner to agree upon a central and commonly agreeable locality,—­one, moreover, which would not meet with the violent opposition of New York.  Madison, who had been in favour of Philadelphia, finally acknowledged Hamilton’s sagacity and gave him his influence and vote.

That point settled, all eyes were turned to Mount Vernon.  The masses took for granted that Washington would respond to every call of duty the public chose to make, and it was inconceivable that anyone else should fill the first term of that great executive experiment.  The universal confidence in Washington and belief that he was to guide the Constitution over the more critical of its shoals, had operated more than any other factor in the ratification of that adventurous instrument.  It was a point upon which Hamilton had harped continually.  That a whole country should turn, as a matter of course, to a man whom they revered for his virtues rather than for any brilliant parts he may have effectually hidden within his cold and silent exterior, their harmonious choice unbroken by an argument against the safety and dignity of the country in the hands of such a man, certainly is a manifest of the same elevation of tone that we infer from the great popularity of the writings of Hamilton and the deference to such men as Jay and Philip Schuyler.  But although they had all the faults of human nature, our forefathers, and were often selfish and jealous to a degree that imperilled the country, at least they had the excuse, not only of being mere mortals, but of living in an era of such changes, uncertainty, and doubt, that public and private interests seemed hopelessly tangled.  They were not debased by political corruption until Jefferson took them in hand, and sowed the bountiful crop which has fattened so vast and so curious a variation upon the original American.