British commander had issued an order that no one should take arms out of the city. Being resolved, however, to take his sword with him, his wife concealed it in her garments, and the two walked together out of the city, and succeeded in escaping the observation of the British outposts. Before another week had elapsed, Mrs. Knox was safe in the country, and her husband was assisting to defend Bunker Hill, as a volunteer aidede-camp to the general in command. His services just then were of the greatest value, since he was one of the very few men in camp who had informed themselves respecting the mode of constructing field-works. He also understood the handling of artillery. Washington's attention was soon drawn to him, and he was immediately employed in the construction of the system of works by which Boston was gradually enclosed, and its garrison at length compelled to put to sea. We find him, next, elected to the command of a company of artillery, not only by the unanimous vote of the men, but with the cordial consent of its former captain, who felt himself too old for active service.

Being thus in command of an artillery company, his first care was to get artillery for it, a task of considerable difficulty in a country destitute of the means of making cannon. The first exploit, which drew upon him the attention and the applause of the whole army, was his getting a supply of cannon from Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. In the dead of winter he travelled through the wilderness to this celebrated fort, and there prepared a long train of sleds and gathered a drove of He returned to camp in 1776, with fifty pieces of ordnance on sleds, all drawn by oxen, and thus furnished the means of arming the field-works which he had assisted to construct. Great was the joy of the army upon the arrival of this train, and Captain Knox was the lion of the hour. John Adams mentions, in his diary, being taken to see the pieces, and he evidently felt all the value of the acquisition, as well as the gallantry of his young friend to whom it was due.

oxen.

When the British troops had abandoned Boston, and New York became the scene of warfare, Captain Knox performed similar services in defending the new position. During the operations on Long Island and the subsequent retreat from New

York, he commanded all the artillery of the army, and was one of the very last officers to leave the city. He remained, indeed, so long as to be left in the rear of the British troops, and he escaped being taken prisoner only by going to the river, seizing a boat, and rowing along the shore as far as Harlem. His comrades had given him up for lost. When he came into view he was welcomed with cheers, and General Washington gave him an old-fashioned embrace. He had one excellent quality of an artillery officer, a voice of stentorian power. When General Washington crossed the Delaware, Colonel Knox, it is said, was of the greatest assistance from the fact that his orders could be heard from one side of the river to the other. He continued to serve, with zeal and ability, during the whole war. He was known in the army as one of General Washington's special adherents and partisans, and the commander-in-chief, on more than one occasion, interposed his authority in behalf of General Knox. When, for example, it was proposed to place the artillery in command of a French general, Washington gave so high a character, as an artillerist, to General Knox, that the scheme was frustrated. Mr. Adams relates an incident which shows that Knox was equally solicitous for the reputation of his chief.

"The news of my appointment to France," says Mr. Adams, "was whispered about, and General Knox came up to dine with me at Braintree. The design of his visit was, as I soon perceived, to sound me in relation to General Washington. He asked me what my opinion of him was. I answered, with the utmost frankness, that I thought him a perfectly honest man, with an amiable and excellent heart, and the most important character at that time among us; for he was the centre of our Union. He asked the question, he said, because, as I was going to Europe, it was of importance that the general's character should be supported in other countries. I replied, that he might be perfectly at his ease on the subject, for he might depend upon it that, both from principle and affection, public and private, I should do my utmost to support his character at all times and in all places, unless something should happen very greatly to alter my opinion of him.”

To sum up the services of General Knox in the Revolution, it is only necessary to say that, at every important engagement and during every important operation, directed by the commander-in-chief in person, General Knox performed, perfectly to his general's satisfaction, the duties devolving upon the chief of artillery. From the siege of Boston, where he not only directed but provided the artillery, to the siege of Yorktown, where, said Washington, " the resources of his genius supplied the defect of means," Knox was always present, active, and skilful.

The war over, he was ordered to the command of West Point, and it was he who directed the disbandment of the troops. He has the credit, as he once had the discredit, of suggesting the Society of the Cincinnati, and the first outline of its organization is still preserved in his own handwriting. Upon the evacuation of New York, he rode by Washington's side when he entered and took possession of the city; and at the celebrated farewell interview between the general and his officers, Knox was the first man whom Washington embraced.

A few years later, when Washington came to the presidency, General Knox was named by him to the secretary ship of war, - a post which he held for four years. The reader is aware that, during the first term of General Washington's administration, the two parties were formed which have ever since, under different names, contended for the ascendency. General Knox was a Federalist, and, as such, shared the odium attached to a party not in harmony with the instincts of the people. Retiring from office in 1795, he removed to Maine, then an outlying province of Massachusetts, where he engaged extensively in business. It appears he was unsuccessful, for in one of Mr. Jefferson's letters of 1799, he says: "General Knox has become bankrupt for four hundred thousand dollars, and has resigned his military commission. He took in General Lincoln for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which breaks him. Colonel Jackson, also, sunk with him." The cause of this misfortune, or, at least, one of the causes, appears to have been an excessive profusion in living and general expenditure. He died in 1806, aged fifty-six years.

Among his friends, both personal and political, General Knox was exceedingly beloved, since he was of an eminently buoyant, happy, and liberal disposition. A respectable soldier and sterling patriot, he appears to have acquitted himself well in the office of secretary of war, and he retained to the last the warm friendship and approbation of his old commander.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

IN the British West Indies, near that Danish group which, they say, Mr. Seward desires to purchase for the United States, there is a circular island containing about twenty square miles, named Nevis. It now contains a population of eleven thousand, and produces for export every year about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of sugar. This island has a governor, and a legislature of fifteen members; it has five parishes, and a public revenue about as large as the salary of our president. To this island, a Scotchman named Hamilton emigrated about the year 1747, and established himself in business as a merchant. He married there a lady of French descent, the daughter of a physician. The fruit of this union was a boy, who lived to be the celebrated Alexander Hamilton, of American history.

The mother of this distinguished man had a short and unhappy life. Her first husband was a Dane, a man of wealth, with whom she lived miserably, and from whom she was finally divorced. Soon after her marriage with the father of Alexander Hamilton, he became a bankrupt, and saved scarcely anything from the wreck of his estate. While Alexander was still a young child, she died, but not before she had made an indelible impression upon the character and memory of her son. His mother dead, and his father a poor and dependent man, the boy was taken home by some relations of his mother who lived upon one of the adjacent Danish islands, where he learned the French language, and became an eager reader of books in both French and English. In his twelfth year he was a merchant's clerk or apprentice, a situation little to his taste, but the duties of which he discharged with perfect fidelity.

At that early day, as at the present time, it was customary