ulties, however, which must
attend the journey before her, and left it to her own choice." His wife
replied in the affirmative, and one of Washington's aides presently wrote
concerning some prize goods to the effect that "There are limes, lemons
and oranges on board, which, being perishable, you must sell immediately.
The General will want some of each, as well of the sweetmeats and pickles
that are on board, as his lady will be here to-day or to-morrow. You will
please to pick up such things on board as you think will be acceptable to
her, and send them as soon as possible; he does not mean to receive
anything without payment."

Lodged at head-quarters, then the Craigie house in Cambridge, the
discomforts of war were reduced to a minimum, but none the less it was a
trying time to Mrs. Washington, who complained that she could not get used
to the distant cannonading, and she marvelled that those about her paid so
little heed to it. With the opening of the campaign in the following
summer she returned to Mount Vernon, but when the army was safely in
winter quarters at Valley Forge she once more journeyed northward, a trip
alluded to by Washington in a letter to Jack, as follows: "Your Mamma is
not yet arrived, but ... expected every hour. [My aide] Meade set off
yesterday (as soon as I got notice of her intention) to meet her. We are
in a dreary kind of place, and uncomfortably provided." And of this
reunion Mrs. Washington wrote, "I came to this place, some time about the
first of February where I found the General very well,... in camp in what
is called the great valley on the Banks of the Schuylkill. Officers and
men are chiefly in Hutts, which they say is tolerably comfortable; the
army are as healthy as can be well expected in general. The General's
apartment is very small; he has had a log cabin built to dine in, which
has made our quarters much more tolerable than they were at first"

Such "winterings" became the regular custom, and brief references in
various letters serve to illustrate them. Thus, in 1779, Washington
informed a friend that "Mrs. Washington, according to custom marched home
when the campaign was about to open;" in July, 1782, he noted that his
wife "sets out this day for Mount Vernon," and later in the same year he
wrote, "as I despair of seeing my home this Winter, I have sent for Mrs.
Washington;" and finally, in a letter he draughted for his wife, he made
her describe herself as "a kind of per