d here we are with the
1st of January, 1776, right upon us, when several thousand soldiers will
leave."

"A very discouraging fact indeed," answered the staff officer; "and how
will you fill the breach created by their going?"

"That is what troubles me. We shall be forced to require soldiers whose
term of enlistment expires, to leave their muskets, allowing them fair
compensation for the same. And to encourage their successors to bring
arms, we must charge each one of them who fails to bring his gun one
dollar for the use of the one we provide."

"A novel way of recruiting and supplying an army, truly," said the staff
officer.

"The only way left to us," remarked Washington.

"Yes; and I suppose that any way is better than none."

Washington wrote to a friend on the 4th of January:

"It is easier to conceive than to describe the situation of my mind for
some time past and my feelings under our present circumstances. Search
the volume of history through, and I much question whether a case
similar to ours can be found; namely, to maintain a post against the
power of the British troops for six months together without powder, and
then to have one army disbanded and another raised within the same
distance (musket shot) of a reinforced enemy.... For two months past I
have scarcely emerged from one difficulty before I have been plunged
into another. How it will end, God, in His great goodness, will direct.
I am thankful for His protection to this time."

A few days later he wrote:

"The reflection of my situation and that of this army produces many an
unhappy hour, when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know
the predicament we are in on a thousand accounts; fewer still will
believe, if any disaster happens to these lines, from what cause it
flows. I have often thought how much happier I should have been, if,
instead of accepting the command under such circumstances, I had taken
my musket on my shoulder and entered the ranks; or, if I could have
justified the measure to posterity and my own conscience, had retired to
the back country and lived in a wigwam."

Still, through his tact and indomitable perseverance, Washington found
his army in a condition to attack Boston in March. He had vainly tried
to induce the British troops to leave their comfortable quarters and
come out to battle. He had so effectually cut off their supplies by his
determined siege that the British Government was compelled to send