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 perambulator, during eight or nine
years of the war."

Another pleasant glimpse during these stormy years is the couple, during a
brief stay in Philadelphia, being entertained almost to death, described
as follows by Franklin's daughter in a letter to her father: "I have
lately been several times abroad with the General and Mrs. Washington. He
always inquires after you in the most affectionate manner, and speaks of
you highly. We danced at Mrs. Powell's your birthday, or night I should
say, in company together, and he told me it was the anniversary of his
marriage; it was just twenty years that night" Again there was junketing
in Philadelphia after the surrender at Yorktown, and one bit of this is
shadowed in a line from Washington to Robert Morris, telling the latter
that "Mrs. Washington, myself and family, will have the honor of dining
with you in the way proposed, to-morrow, being Christmas day."