“A smart Yankee soldier in his trial for playing cards yesterday, set up a defense which is the talk of the camp.  For a little time it changed the tilt of the wrinkles on the grim visage of war.  His claim was that he had no Bible and that the cards aided him in his devotions.

“The ace reminded him of the one God; the deuce of the Father and Son; the tray of the Trinity; the four spot of the four evangelists—­Matthew, Luke, Mark and John; the five spot of the five wise and the five foolish virgins; the six spot of the six days of creation; the seven of the Sabbath; the eight of Noah and his family; the nine of the nine ungrateful lepers; the ten of the Ten Commandments; the knave of Judas; the queen was to him the Queen of Sheba and the king was the one great King of Heaven and the Universe.

“’You will go to the guard house for three days so that, hereafter, a pack of cards will remind you only of a foolish soldier,’ said Colonel Provost.”

Snow and bitter winds descended upon the camp early in December.  It was a worn, ragged, weary but devoted army of about eleven thousand men that followed Washington into Valley Forge to make a camp for the winter.  Of these, two thousand and ninety-eight were unfit for duty.  Most of the latter had neither boots nor shoes.  They marched over roads frozen hard, with old rags and pieces of hide wrapped around their feet.  There were many red tracks in the snow in the Valley of the Schuylkill that day.  Hardly a man was dressed for cold weather.  Hundreds were shivering and coughing with influenza.

“When I look at these men I can not help thinking how small are my troubles,” Jack wrote to his mother.  “I will complain of them no more.  Solomon and I have given away all the clothes we have except those on our backs.  A fiercer enemy than the British is besieging us here.  He is Winter.  It is the duty of the people we are fighting for to defend us against this enemy.  We should not have to exhaust ourselves in such a battle.  Do they think that because God has shown His favor at Brooklyn, Saratoga, and sundry other places, He is in a way committed?  Are they not disposed to take it easy and over-work the Creator?  I can not resist the impression that they are praying too much and paying too little.  I fear they are lying back and expecting God to send ravens to feed us and angels to make our boots and weave our blankets and clothing.  He will not go into that kind of business.  The Lord is not a shoemaker or a weaver or a baker.  He can have no respect for a people who would leave its army to starve and freeze to death in the back country.  If they are to do that their faith is rotten with indolence and avarice.