PAGE 516.  The oft-told tale of Hamilton and Burr meeting at the house of Madame Jumel on the night before the challenge, I have, after careful investigation, utterly repudiated.  In the first place, the lady had been married but two months, and to a Frenchman at that.  He was a rich man and had undoubtedly married her for love, moreover was devoted to her as long as he lived.  It is not at all likely that he was permitting Hamilton to call one night and Burr the next—­so the story runs.  In the second place, Hamilton, whatever may have been his adventures in the past, was in no condition for gallivanting at this period, as I think I have demonstrated.  Dr. Hosack, in the paper he prepared for the Post on the day following Hamilton’s death, asserted that owing to the patient’s feeble condition he had been unable to give the usual medicines.  At the same time Hamilton had been working from fourteen to fifteen hours a day.  The conclusions are obvious.  Moreover, General Hamilton, now eighty-seven, and in perfect possession of all his faculties, has told me that he frequently accompanied his grandmother, Hamilton’s widow, to call on Madame Jumel.  In the small town of New York no such sensational meeting could have been kept a secret for long.  Madame Jumel lived in the city at the time, by the way, her husband not buying the house on the Heights until 1815.

But that she was at the bottom of the matter I should not have had the slightest doubt, even were it not an accepted fact by both Hamilton’s present family and hers, and I arrived at my conclusions, as the story of all concerned, and of the history of the times, developed.

PAGE 522.  Burr kept these letters until he died, at the age of 80, and left them to Matthew Davis, who destroyed those whose writers were dead, and returned the others to certain ancient and highly respected dames.

PAGE 527.  These pistols are now in the possession of Mr. Richard Church.

PAGE 531.  Hamilton’s strong likeness to the Caesars is best seen in the marbles of him, notably the one executed by Ceracchi.  The painted likenesses of him either do not resemble him at all or are so full of his vivacity, mischievous humour, and indomitable youth that they are wholly himself.

From “Statistical Account of Scotland,” Vol.  V, page 450, Edinburgh:  “The most remarkable person connected with the parish (Stevenston in Ayrshire) was the late General Alexander Hamilton of the family of Grange, though America was the field in which he distinguished himself.  He was excelled by none as a general, orator, financier, lawyer.  In the words of one who knew him, he was ’the mentor of Washington, the framer of the present constitution of America, a man of strict honour and integrity; equally esteemed in public and in private life.’”

The above came to my hand after the book went to press, and I publish it to emphasize the fact that the Scotch Hamiltons eagerly claimed the kinship of Hamilton, quite indifferent to the irregularity of his birth.