ent and agreeable to you to take pot luck with me to-day,"
the General wrote John Adams in 1776, "I shall be glad of your company."
Pot luck it was for commander-in-chief and staff. Mention has been made of
how sometimes Washington slept on the ground, and even when under cover
there was not occasionally much more comfort. Pickering relates that one
night was passed in "Headquarters at Galloway's, an old log house. The
General lodged in a bed, and his family on the floor about him. We had
plenty of sepawn and milk, and all were contented."

Oftentimes there were difficulties in the hospitality. "I have been at my
prest. quarters since the 1st day of Decr.," Washington complained to the
commissary-general, "and have not a Kitchen to cook a Dinner in, altho'
the Logs have been put together some considerable time by my own Guard.
Nor is there a place at this moment in which a servant can lodge, with the
smallest degree of comfort. Eighteen belonging to my family, and all Mrs.
Ford's, are crowded together in her Kitchen, and scarce one of them able
to speak for the cold they have caught." Pickering, in telling how he
tried to secure lodgings away from head-quarters, gave for his reasons
that "they are exceedingly pinched for room.... Had I conceived how much
satisfaction, quiet and even leisure, I should have enjoyed at separate
quarters, I would have taken them six months ago. For at head-quarters
there is a continual throng, and my room, in particular, (when I was happy
enough to get one,) was always crowded by all that came to headquarters on
business, because there was no other for them, we having, for the most
part, been in such small houses."

There were other difficulties. "I cannot get as much cloth," the general
wrote, "as will make cloaths for my servants, notwithstanding one of them
that attends my person and table is indecently and most shamefully naked."
One of his aides said to a correspondent, jocularly, "I take your Caution
to me in Regard to my Health very kindly, but I assure you, you need be
under no Apprehension of my losing it on the Score of Excess of living,
that Vice is banished from this Army and the General's Family in
particular. We never sup, but go to bed and are early up." "Only
conceive," Washington complained to Congress, "the mortification they
(even the general officers) must suffer, when they cannot invite a French
officer, a visiting friend, or a travelling acquaintance, to a better
repas