Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/328

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12. Dined and supped at the City Tavern.

13. Dined at the City Tavern with the Congress. Spent the evening at my lodgings.

14. Dined at Mr. Wellings and spent the evening at my lodgings.

15. Dined at Burnes and spent the evening at my lodgings.

Something happened; for Washington was made commander-in-chief; but the incident gets no more space or comment in this singular journal than planting turnips back of the garden. During a considerable period of the war he was too busy to-write at all.

On entering Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention in 1787 he was for a few moments impressed with his reception by his old officers and by his own conduct and appearance. But his memoranda of the sessions are perfectly barren. We learn the names of a great number of Philadelphia ladies and gentlemen with whom he "drank tea"—at one place he "drank tea in great splendour"; we learn that he sat to Mr. Peale for his portrait, attended charity concerts, visited Morris at his country place, went trout fishing and rode away from his fishing companion to visit the site of one of his old cantonments.

What did he feel on August 19, 1787, standing on the old camp ground from which he had marched to his winter quarters in Valley Forge? I do not know. All that he says is: "traversed my old incampment, and contemplated on the dangers which threatened the American Army at that place." All that he says of the faintest color, when the great business of the four months' convention is over, is that the mem-