This was but the beginning of service to Pennsylvania during the Revolution. His activities were so valuable to the Colonies that a Tory poet published in the _Pennsylvania Evening Post_ of December 2, 1777, a verse addressed "To David Rittenhouse," of which the first stanza read: "Meddle not with state affairs, Keep acquaintance with the stars; Science, David, is thy line; Warp not Nature's great design. If thou to fame would'st rise." The following year Thomas Jefferson wrote to him: "You should consider that the world has but one Rittenhouse, and never had one before.... Are those powers, then, which, being intended for the erudition of the world, are, like light and air, the world's common property, to be taken from their proper pursuit to do the commonplace drudgery of governing a single State?" To the call of the nation Rittenhouse responded in April, 1792, when President Washington appointed him the first Director of the Mint. His closing years were full of honors, but his strength was declining rapidly; he had spent himself so fully for his country that his power of resistance was small. Just before he died, on June 26, 1796, he said to a friend who had been writing to him, "You make the way to God easier." XXXVIII THE HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE, PENNSYLVANIA WHERE WASHINGTON LIVED DURING THE WINTER OF 1777-78 A few rods from the beautiful Schuylkill River, at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, twenty-four miles from Philadelphia, is the quaint stone house where Washington spent nearly six months of the most trying year of the Revolution. While the British troops were occupying Philadelphia Congress was in session at York, Pennsylvania. Valley Forge was accordingly a strategic location, for from here it was comparatively simple to guard the roads leading out of Philadelphia, and to prevent both the exit of the British and the entrance of supplies designed for the enemy. The eleven thousand men who marched to the site selected for the camp were miserably equipped for a winter in the open. Provisions were scarce, and clothing and shoes were even more scarce. But the men looked forward bravely to the months of exposure before them.