On the Way
(Philadelphia, 1794)
Note.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr— who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804.
BURR
Hamilton, if he rides you down, rememberThat I was here to speak, and so to saveYour fabric from catastrophe. That’s good;For I perceive that you observe him also.A President, a-riding of his horse,May dust a General and be forgiven;But why be dusted—when we’re all alike,All equal, and all happy. Here he comes—And there he goes. And we, by your new patent,Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside,With our two hats off to his Excellency.Why not his Majesty, and done with it?Forgive me if I shook your meditation,But you that weld our credit should have eyesTo see what’s coming. Bury me first if -I- do.
HAMILTON
There’s always in some pocket of your brainA care for me; wherefore my gratitudeFor your attention is commensurateWith your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings;We are as royal as two ditch-diggers;But owe me not your sceptre. These are the daysWhen first a few seem all; but if we live,We may again be seen to be the fewThat we have always been. These are the daysWhen men forget the stars, and are forgotten.
BURR
But why forget them? They’re the same that winkedUpon the world when AlcibiadesCut off his dog’s tail to induce distinction.There are dogs yet, and AlcibiadesIs not forgotten.
HAMILTON
Yes, there are dogs enough,God knows; and I can hear them in my dreams.
BURR
Never a doubt. But what you hear the mostIs your new music, something out of tuneWith your intention. How in the name of Cain,I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance,When all men are musicians. Tell me that,I hear you saying, and I’ll tell you the nameOf Samson’s mother. But why shroud yourselfBefore the coffin comes? For all you know,The tree that is to fall for your last houseIs now a sapling. You may have to waitSo long as to be sorry; though I doubt it,For you are not at home in your new EdenWhere chilly whispers of a likely frostAccumulate already in the air.I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton,Would be for you in your autumnal moodA pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders.
HAMILTON
If so it is you think, you may as wellGive over thinking. We are done with ermine.What I fear most is not the multitude,But those who are to loop it with a stringThat has one end in France and one end here.I’m not so fortified with observationThat I could swear that more than half a scoreAmong us who see lightning see that ruinIs not the work of thunder. Since the worldWas ordered, there was never a long pauseFor caution between doing and undoing.
BURR
Go on, sir; my attention is a trapSet for the catching of all complimentsTo Monticello, and all else abroadThat has a name or an identity.
HAMILTON
I leave to you the names—there are too many;Yet one there is to sift and hold apart,As now I see. There comes at last a glimmerThat is not always clouded, or too late.But I was near and young, and had the reinsTo play with while he manned a team so rawThat only God knows where the end had beenOf all that riding without Washington.There was a nation in the man who passed us,If there was not a world. I may have drivenSince then some restive horses, and alone,And through a splashing of abundant mud;But he who made the dust that sets you onTo coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry,And in a measure safe.
BURR
Here’s a new tuneFrom Hamilton. Has your caution all at once,And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle?I have forgotten what my father saidWhen I was born, but there’s a rustling of itAmong my memories, and it makes a noiseAbout as loud as all that I have heldAnd fondled heretofore of your same caution.But that’s affairs, not feelings. If our friendsGuessed half we say of them, our enemiesWould itch in our friends’ jackets. Howsoever,The world is of a sudden on its head,And all are spilled—unless you cling aloneWith Washington. Ask Adams about that.
HAMILTON
We’ll not ask Adams about anything.We fish for lizards when we choose to askFor what we know already is not coming,And we must eat the answer. Where’s the useOf asking when this man says everything,With all his tongues of silence?
BURR
I dare say.I dare say, but I won’t. One of those tonguesI’ll borrow for the nonce. He’ll never miss it.We mean his Western Majesty, King George.
HAMILTON
I mean the man who rode by on his horse.I’ll beg of you the meed of your indulgenceIf I should say this planet may have doneA deal of weary whirling when at last,If ever, Time shall aggregate againA majesty like his that has no name.
BURR
Then you concede his Majesty? That’s good,And what of yours? Here are two majesties.Favor the Left a little, Hamilton,Or you’ll be floundering in the ditch that waitsFor riders who forget where they are riding.If we and France, as you anticipate,Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself,Do you see for the master of the feast?There may be a place waiting on your headFor laurel thick as Nero’s. You don’t know.I have not crossed your glory, though I mightIf I saw thrones at auction.
HAMILTON
Yes, you might.If war is on the way, I shall be—here;And I’ve no vision of your distant heels.
BURR
I see that I shall take an inferenceTo bed with me to-night to keep me warm.I thank you, Hamilton, and I approveYour fealty to the aggregated greatnessOf him you lean on while he leans on you.
HAMILTON
This easy phrasing is a game of yoursThat you may win to lose. I beg your pardon,But you that have the sight will not employThe will to see with it. If you did so,There might be fewer ditches dug for othersIn your perspective; and there might be fewerContemporary motes of prejudiceBetween you and the man who made the dust.Call him a genius or a gentleman,A prophet or a builder, or what not,But hold your disposition off the balance,And weigh him in the light. Once (I believeI tell you nothing new to your surmise,Or to the tongues of towns and villages)I nourished with an adolescent fancy—Surely forgivable to you, my friend—An innocent and amiable convictionThat I was, by the grace of honest fortune,A savior at his elbow through the war,Where I might have observed, more than I did,Patience and wholesome passion. I was there,And for such honor I gave nothing worseThan some advice at which he may have smiled.I must have given a modicum besides,Or the rough interval between those daysAnd these would never have made for me my friends,Or enemies. I should be something somewhere—I say not what—but I should not be hereIf he had not been there. Possibly, too,You might not—or that Quaker with his cane.
BURR
Possibly, too, I should. When the AlmightyRides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it.
HAMILTON
It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind;No god, or ghost, or demon—only a man:A man whose occupation is the needOf those who would not feel it if it bit them;And one who shapes an age while he enduresThe pin pricks of inferiorities;A cautious man, because he is but one;A lonely man, because he is a thousand.No marvel you are slow to find in himThe genius that is one spark or is nothing:His genius is a flame that he must holdSo far above the common heads of menThat they may view him only through the mistOf their defect, and wonder what he is.It seems to me the mystery that is in himThat makes him only more to me a manThan any other I have ever known.
BURR
I grant you that his worship is a man.I’m not so much at home with mysteries,May be, as you—so leave him with his fire:God knows that I shall never put it out.He has not made a cripple of himselfIn his pursuit of me, though I have heardHis condescension honors me with parts.Parts make a whole, if we’ve enough of them;And once I figured a sufficiencyTo be at least an atom in the annalsOf your republic. But I must have erred.
HAMILTON
You smile as if your spirit lived at easeWith error. I should not have named it so,Failing assent from you; nor, if I did,Should I be so complacent in my skillTo comb the tangled language of the peopleAs to be sure of anything in these days.Put that much in account with modesty.
BURR
What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton,Have you, in the last region of your dreaming,To do with “people”? You may be the devilIn your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoalsAre waiting on the progress of our shipUnless you steer it, but you’ll find it irksomeAlone there in the stern; and some warm dayThere’ll be an inland music in the rigging,And afterwards on deck. I’m not affinedOr favored overmuch at Monticello,But there’s a mighty swarming of new beesAbout the premises, and all have wings.If you hear something buzzing before long,Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering alsoThere was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard,And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly.
HAMILTON
I don’t remember that he cut his hair off.
BURR
Somehow I rather fancy that he did.If so, it’s in the Book; and if not so,He did the rest, and did it handsomely.
HAMILTON
Commend yourself to Ahab and his waysIf they inveigle you to emulation;But where, if I may ask it, are you tendingWith your invidious wielding of the Scriptures?You call to mind an eminent archangelWho fell to make him famous. Would you fallSo far as he, to be so far remembered?
BURR
Before I fall or rise, or am an angel,I shall acquaint myself a little furtherWith our new land’s new language, which is not—Peace to your dreams—an idiom to your liking.I’m wondering if a man may always knowHow old a man may be at thirty-seven;I wonder likewise if a prettier timeCould be decreed for a good man to vanishThan about now for you, before you fade,And even your friends are seeing that you have hadYour cup too full for longer mortal triumph.Well, you have had enough, and had it young;And the old wine is nearer to the leesThan you are to the work that you are doing.
HAMILTON
When does this philological excursionInto new lands and languages begin?
BURR
Anon—that is, already. Only FortuneGave me this afternoon the benefactionOf your blue back, which I for love pursued,And in pursuing may have saved your life—Also the world a pounding piece of news:Hamilton bites the dust of Washington,Or rather of his horse. For you alone,Or for your fame, I’d wish it might have been so.
HAMILTON
Not every man among us has a friendSo jealous for the other’s fame. How longAre you to diagnose the doubtful caseOf Demos—and what for? Have you a swordFor some new Damocles? If it’s for me,I have lost all official appetite,And shall have faded, after January,Into the law. I’m going to New York.
BURR
No matter where you are, one of these daysI shall come back to you and tell you something.This Demos, I have heard, has in his wristA pulse that no two doctors have as yetCounted and found the same, and in his mouthA tongue that has the like alacrityFor saying or not for saying what most it isThat pullulates in his ignoble mind.One of these days I shall appear again,To tell you more of him and his opinions;I shall not be so long out of your sight,Or take myself so far, that I may not,Like Alcibiades, come back again.He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill.
HAMILTON
There’s an example in Themistocles:He went away to Persia, and fared well.
BURR
So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so?I had not planned it so. Is this the roadI take? If so, farewell.
HAMILTON
Quite so. Farewell.