Little Lion

by Ann Hood

  Great-Aunt Maisie frowned.

  “What’s wrong now?” the waitress asked.

  “Why, it’s too hot!”

  “How do you know? You haven’t tried it yet,” the waitress said.

  “I can tell. Look at the steam coming from it.”

  She started to remove the bowl, but Great-Aunt Maisie shooed her away. “Well, it will cool eventually, won’t it?” she said.

  After the waitress left, their mother whispered, “You must be nicer to the staff here.”

  “All I want is a bowl of New England clam chowder that I can eat,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  She took a spoonful and blew on it. The three of them watched her and then looked at one another.

  “Your hand is so steady,” their mother said.

  “Mmmm,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  They watched as she ate that spoonful and another.

  “Instead of staring at me, Jennifer, why don’t you go and order some lunch?” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  Their mother mumbled, “All right,” and went to put in her order.

  Great-Aunt Maisie put the spoon down and smiled at Maisie and Felix.

  “Well,” she said, “how have you two been?”

  Maisie blurted, “Oh, Great-Aunt Maisie! We’ve had the most wonderful adventure!”

  “Yes?” she said eagerly.

  “We stowed away on a ship,” Maisie said.

  “And we took a stagecoach from Boston to New York—” Felix added.

  “And New York looked so different we could hardly find our way around,” Maisie said.

  Great-Aunt Maisie clapped her hands in delight.

  “Tell me, children, who was it you met?” she asked.

  “Alexander Hamilton,” Maisie said.

  “Oh! That is a good one!” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “Bravo!”

  “Great-Aunt Maisie,” Felix said, looking around to be sure no one could hear him. “Did you do this, too? You and Thorne?”

  At the sound of her brother’s name, Great-Aunt Maisie’s eyes darkened.

  “Thorne,” she said. “Don’t say his name in my presence. That rascal! That—”

  “Are you two upsetting Great-Aunt Maisie?” their mother said, sitting down.

  Maisie shook her head.

  “They were just telling me about their lovely weekend,” Great-Aunt Maisie said. She took another spoonful of chowder. “Oh, dear,” she said to their mother, “they forgot to bring me those little oyster crackers I like so much with my chowder. Would you find some for me?”

  “Sure,” their mother said, forcing a smile.

  As soon as she walked off, Great-Aunt Maisie leaned toward them.

  “My guess,” Great-Aunt Maisie said in a low voice, “is that he’s in London. At least he was last time I heard.”

  “When was that?” Felix asked.

  “1941,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  “That was, like, seventy years ago!” Maisie said.

  “Was it?” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “My, time flies.”

  She closed her eyes, and for a moment they thought she had fallen asleep. But then she murmured, “Alexander Hamilton.”

  Great-Aunt Maisie opened her eyes again and said with a sigh, “I never got to meet him. I bet he was brilliant.”

  “Yes, he was,” Maisie said.

  “Anyone who wrote The Federalist Papers would have to be brilliant. And confident—”

  “Yes,” Maisie agreed.

  Great-Aunt Maisie smiled and nodded. “Was he very handsome?”

  “He’s, like, five seven,” Felix said at the exact same time that Maisie gushed, “Oh, very handsome!”

  “A small man!” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “Hmm. I actually like a small man.”

  “Great-Aunt Maisie!” their mother said, appearing at the table with two packages of oyster crackers. “Are you telling them about old boyfriends?”

  “Not at all,” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “We’re discussing Alexander Hamilton.”

  Their mother thought a moment. “I know he’s on money. The ten? The twenty?”

  “He was the first secretary of the treasury,” Felix said. “That’s why.”

  Their mother looked at them, surprised. “Well, I guess the Anne Hutchinson Elementary School is teaching you quite a bit already.”

  “Did they have pudding?” Great-Aunt Maisie asked their mother.

  Maisie and Felix could tell their mother’s patience was running thin.

  “Yes,” she said evenly.

  “Butterscotch?” Great-Aunt Maisie asked.

  “Why don’t I go check?” their mother said, getting up again.

  “When do you think you’ll go again?” Great-Aunt Maisie asked as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “Oh,” Felix said quickly, “we’re not going to go again.”

  “What?” Great-Aunt Maisie said, her back stiffening.

  “We almost didn’t get back this time,” Maisie said. “Alexander kept trying to ditch us, and we had to sleep on a beach and—”

  “But you must go back,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  “Really, Great-Aunt Maisie,” Maisie said. “We agreed. No more.”

  Their mother was approaching again with a small dish of butterscotch pudding.

  “You don’t understand,” Great-Aunt Maisie said firmly. “You must go back again. You must go to The Treasure Chest and travel in time.”

  “Butterscotch!” their mother said triumphantly.

  Great-Aunt Maisie slowly got to her feet. “I’ve lost my appetite,” she said.

  “Let me help you,” their mother said, taking her elbow.

  But Great-Aunt Maisie wouldn’t let her hold on.

  “Only the children can help me,” she said, leveling her gaze at Maisie and Felix. “You will, won’t you, children?”

  Felix turned to Maisie. She chewed her bottom lip as she thought. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths until Maisie nodded.

  “Felix?” Great-Aunt Maisie said.

  Felix nodded, too.

  “Wonderful!” Great-Aunt Maisie said, sitting back down. “I think I will have a taste of this.” She dug a spoon into the pudding and took a bite.

  Maisie and Felix looked at each other. It seemed they would go back to The Treasure Chest again after all.

  Alexander Hamilton was born on the tiny island of Nevis in the British West Indies. After his mother, Rachel Faucett Lavien, divorced her first husband, she moved to nearby Saint Croix. There she met James Hamilton and had Alexander and his older brother, James. When Alexander’s father abandoned the family, his mother opened a small store in Christiansted. Alexander loved books and loved going to school. His mother had a small library filled with the classics of the time, and he read them all at a young age.

  In February 1768, a yellow fever epidemic swept Saint Croix, and both Alexander and his mother fell ill. Although Alexander recovered, his mother died, leaving him orphaned. The family of Alexander’s friend Neddy Stevens took him in. They also bought his mother’s collection of books at an auction of her belongings so that Alexander could have them. At the age of thirteen, Alexander got a job as a clerk at Beekman and Cruger, a large import and export company that had its main office in New York City. New York was one of the thirteen colonies and was still ruled by Britain. Goods shipped to and from Saint Croix avoided the heavy taxes imposed on the colonies by the British. Saint Croix was also very active in the slave trade.

  When Alexander was sixteen years old, his boss, Nicholas Cruger, got sick and went home to New York, leaving him in charge of the company for over five months. Local merchants and traders were impressed with how wise and confident Alexander was in this role. He was a tough negotiator a
nd a good businessman. However, when Nicholas Cruger returned, Alexander reluctantly went back to his job as a clerk. He dreamed of joining Neddy, who now lived in New York and was studying at King’s College (now Columbia University) to become a physician.

  On August 31, 1772, a hurricane hit the island, devastating Christiansted. Alexander had already had some poems published in the newspaper, the Royal Danish-American Gazette. But in the aftermath of the hurricane, he wrote an essay describing its effects on Saint Croix. His mentor, Reverend Knox, and other community leaders were so impressed with his writing skills that they created a fund to send him to college in New York. That October, Alexander set sail for America. He never again set foot on Saint Croix.

  Alexander lived with the Livingston family in New Jersey while he studied for the tests that would gain him entrance to college. Although he wanted to attend King’s College, the Livingston family and others urged him to apply to the College of New Jersey (now known as Princeton University). However, the president there did not like the arrogant young man and declined him admission. King’s College accepted him happily, and Alexander became a familiar figure on campus as he strode around memorizing by speaking out loud to himself. At only 5'7", he made an impression on everyone he met because of his keen intelligence and his passion to make a name for himself in the colonies.

  When Alexander arrived in New York, tensions between the colonists and the British were building, and the Revolution was near. In 1776, he left college before graduating to fight for freedom. He was an officer in the Continental army and soon became one of General George Washington’s most trusted advisers, writing reports and letters for him and going on important military missions.

  Alexander believed in a strong central government. After the war, he was sent to the Continental Congress as a representative from New York. There, and at the Annapolis Convention, he fought that the interests of the union as a whole should be placed over those of the individual states. The only New Yorker to sign the Constitution, he wrote a series of fifty-one essays urging the people of New York to approve the Constitution. These essays, which are still considered the best explanations of the Constitution, became known as The Federalist Papers. (The Federalist Papers also include essays by John Jay and James Madison.)

  In September 1789, Alexander was named the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. Some historians consider this the most important of the executive departments because the new government had to find ways to pay off the debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. Alexander and Thomas Jefferson disagreed on many things. For example, Alexander believed that the nation should pay off the individual states’ debts; Jefferson believed each state should pay its own debts. The men made a deal: Jefferson would back Alexander’s plan if Alexander backed Jefferson’s idea to move the nation’s capital from New York to land near Virginia.

  Before retiring to his home, the Grange, in Manhattan, Alexander established a national bank, helped rebuild the army, introduced the dollar system, and helped to create the silver dollar.

  In 1804, Alexander was actively against Aaron Burr’s bid for governor of New York. After Burr lost the race, he challenged Alexander to a duel. Although duels were common at the time, Alexander himself had worked to make them illegal in New York after his own son was killed in one. Therefore, Hamilton met Burr on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River at dawn on July 11, 1804. It is believed that Alexander’s gun misfired, leading Burr to shoot and mortally wound him. He was carried back to New York City and died the next afternoon.

  Known as the Little Lion because of his small stature and great power, Alexander Hamilton is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.