Mrs. Drinker, who went with a committee of women to camp at Valley Forge, has left a brief description of head-quarters hospitality:  “Dinner was served, to which he invited us.  There were 15 Officers, besides ye Gl. and his wife, Gen. Greene, and Gen. Lee.  We had an elegant dinner, which was soon over, when we went out with ye Genls wife, up to her Chamber—­and saw no more of him.”  Claude Blanchard, too, describes a dinner, at which “there was twenty-five covers used by some officers of the army and a lady to whom the house belonged in which the general lodged.  We dined under the tent.  I was placed along side of the general.  One of his aides-de-camp did the honors.  The table was served in the American style and pretty abundantly; vegetables, roast beef, lamb, chickens, salad dressed with nothing but vinegar, green peas, puddings, and some pie, a kind of tart, greatly in use in England and among the Americans, all this being put upon the table at the same time.  They gave us on the same plate beef, green peas, lamb, &c.”

Nor was the menage of the General unequal to unexpected calls.  Chastellux tells of his first arrival in camp and introduction to Washington:  “He conducted me to his house, where I found the company still at table, although the dinner had been long over.  He presented me to the Generals Knox, Waine, Howe, &c. and to his family, then composed of Colonels Hamilton and Tilgman, his Secretaries and his Aides de Camp, and of Major Gibbs, commander of his guards; for in England and America, the Aides de Camp, Adjutants and other officers attached to the General, form what is called his family.  A fresh dinner was prepared for me and mine; and the present was prolonged to keep me company.”  “At nine,” he elsewhere writes, “supper was served, and when the hour of bed-time came, I found that the chamber, to which the General conducted me was the very parlour I speak of, wherein he had made them place a camp-bed.”  Of his hospitality Washington himself wrote,—­

“I have asked Mrs. Cochran & Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprize them of their fate?  As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned; I will.  It is needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies.  Of this they had ocular proof yesterday.  To say how it is usually covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be the purport of my Letter.

“Since our arrival at this happy spot, we have had a ham, (sometimes a shoulder) of Bacon, to grace the head of the Table; a piece of roast Beef adorns the foot; a dish of beans, or greens, (almost imperceptible,) decorates the center.  When the cook has a mind to cut a figure, (which, I presume will be the case to-morrow) we have two Beef-steak pyes, or dishes of crabs, in addition, one on each side of the center dish, dividing the space & reducing the distance between dish & dish to about 6 feet, which without them would