104 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 



more than consecutive thinking or tenacious memory 

 or a fine artistic sense are required ; there is needed 

 an insight into human nature and the conditions of 

 human life such as can hardly be acquired save by 

 long years of experience. Seldom has there been 

 such a case as that of Hamilton. His intellect 

 seemed to have sprung forth in full maturity, like 

 Pallas from the brain of Zeus. What little is known 

 of his childhood and youth can be told in few words. 

 Alexander Hamilton was born upon the island of 

 Nevis, in the West Indies, on the nth of January, 

 1757. His father belonged to the famous Scottish 

 family of the Hamiltons of Grange, his mother was 

 daughter of a Huguenot gentleman named Fawcette, 

 who had fled to the West Indies after the revocation 

 of the Edict of Nantes. He was equally at home in 

 the English and French languages. His father fell 

 into financial difficulties, and his mother died during 

 his childhood, so that he was placed at school at Santa 

 Cruz under the care of some of her relatives. His 

 school studies were accompanied by a wide course of 

 miscellaneous reading, assisted by the advice of Dr. 

 Hugh Knox, a kindly and sagacious Presbyterian 

 minister and a graduate of Princeton. Before his 

 thirteenth birthday he entered the counting-house of 

 Nicholas Cruger, a merchant, who carried on a very 

 considerable business. Here his wonderful precocity 

 soon showed itself. Business letters of his, written at 

 that period, have been preserved which would do 

 credit to a trained business man ; and before the boy 

 had been a year in the house, his employer, having 

 occasion to leave the island, intrusted its entire man- 

 agement to him. In spite of this extraordinary apti- 



