“Let me congratulate you, captain,” observes young Aaron, extravagantly polite the better to set off the sneer that marks his manner, “on not having thrown away your colors. May I ask your name?” “I, sir,” returns the artillery youth, as much moved of resentment at young Aaron’s sneer, as is possible for one in his perturbed frame, “I, sir, am Captain Alexander Hamilton.” “And I, sir, am Major Burr. Let me compliment you, Captain Hamilton, for the ardor you display in carrying your battery forward. One might suppose from your headlong zeal that the English forces lie in that direction. I must needs say, however, that the zeal which casts away its stores and baggage, and leaves a gun behind, is ill considered.” Captain Hamilton’s face clouds angrily; but, since he is thinking more on the English than on insults that perilous morning, he does not reply to the taunt. Young Aaron, feeling the better for his expressions of contempt, wheels off to the left toward the Hudson, leaving the other to bring on his battery with what breathless speed he may. “Now, had that Captain Hamilton been in the light on Long Island,” remarks young Aaron to his companions, “the hurry he shows might have found partial excuse. As it is, I hold his flight too feverish, when one remembers that it is from an enemy which as yet he has personally neither faced nor seen.” Young Aaron puts in divers idle months at Kingsbridge. His conduct on Long Island, and during the retreat of the army toward the north, has multiplied his fame for an indomitable hardihood. Indeed he is inclined to compliment himself; though he hides the fact defensively in his own breast. This good opinion of his services teaches him to entertain ambitions of the vaulting, not to say o’er-leaping sort. As he now, by the light of recent achievement, measures his merits nothing short of a colonelcy and the leadership of a regiment will do him justice. Conceive then, how deeply he feels slighted when Washington fails to share these liberal views, and promotes him to nothing higher than that lieutenant colonelcy which his hopes have so much outgrown. He accepts; but he feels the title fit him with an awkward nearness, as might a coat that some blundering tailor has cut too small. The letter of acceptance which he indites to Washington includes such paragraphs as this: _I am constrained to observe that the late date of my appointment as lieutenant colonel, subjects me to the command of officers who, in the late campaign, were my juniors. With due submission, sir, I should like to know whether it was misconduct on my part or extraordinary merit on theirs, which has thus given them the preference. I desire, on my part, to avoid equally the character of turbulent or passive, but as a decent regard to rank is proper and necessary I hope the concern I feel in this matter will be found excusable in one who regards his honor next to the welfare of his country._