"A general cry through the camp this evening: 'no meat--no meat.' The distant vales echo back--'no meat.' 'What have you for dinner, Boys?' 'Nothing but fire-cake and water, sir! At night. 'Gentlemen, supper is ready.' 'What is your supper, lads?' 'Fire-cake and water Sir.'" Again on December 22d: "Lay excessive cold and uncomfortable last night. My eyes started out of their orbits like a rabbit's eyes, occasioned by a great cold and smoke. Huts go slowly. Cold and smoke make us fret.--I don't know anything that vexes a man's soul more than hot smoke continually blowing into one's eyes, and when he attempts to avoid it, he is met by a cold and freezing wind." On December 25th, Xmas, this entry: "Still in tents. The sick suffer much in tents. We give them mutton and grog and capital medicine it is once in a while." January 1st: "I am alive. I am well. Huts go on briskly." I have quoted thus lengthily from this diary, which gives, perhaps, the most vivid picture we possess of that dark period, simply because it touches upon almost all that concerns the life of the soldiers that winter,--upon their dwellings, their food, their health, their courage. The Doctor repeatedly speaks of the huts which were to shelter the men. In the order issued by Washington to his generals early in December, directions were given concerning the construction of these dwellings. According to these directions, the major-generals, accompanied by the engineers, were to fix on the proper spot for hutting. The sunside of the hills was chosen, and here they constructed long rows of log huts, and made numerous stockades and bristling pikes for defence along the line of the trench. For these purposes and for their fuel they cut off an entire forest of timber. Can't you hear the steady crash of the ax held by hands benumbed with the cold, as blow, by blow, they felled the trees on the hillside, eager to erect the crude huts which were to give better shelter than the tents in which they were yet shivering and choking? In cutting their fire wood, the soldiers were directed to save such parts of each tree as would do for building, reserving 16 or 18 feet of trunk for logs to rear their huts. "The quartermaster-general, (so says the order of December 20th) is to delay no time, but procure large quantities of straw, either for covering the huts or for beds." This last item would suggest the meagreness of the furnishing. Throughout the entire winter the soldier could look for few of the barest necessities of life. An order from headquarters directed that each hut should be provided with a pail. Dishes were a rarity. Each soldier carried his knife in his pocket, while one horn spoon, a pewter dish, and a horn tumbler into which whiskey rarely entered, did duty for a whole mess. The eagerness to possess a single dish is illustrated by an anecdote which has come down in my own family, if I may presume to narrate it.