The tournament was between the "Knights of the Ladies of the Blended Rose and the Ladies of the Burning Mountain," the latter presumably the daughters of the country about to be consumed! The gayety was at its height when the army was encamped just across the Schuylkill at Valley Forge--when the winter was one of extraordinary rigor. During that winter the army was often without bread, often entirely without meat. "Few men" had "more than one shirt, many only the moiety of one, and some none at all." Men were confined in hospitals or farmers' houses for want of shoes. In camp there were on a single day 2,898 men unfit for duty because they were "barefoot and otherwise naked." In December the men built fires and sat up all night because there were no blankets to cover them. When a march was necessary their way could be traced by their bleeding feet. In three weeks of this time the army at Valley Forge lost, in its overflowing hospitals, hundreds, some say thousands, of men. Just across the river American women were bandying idle compliments with the British and Hessian officers, living on delicacies of their providing, dancing at midnight routs and noonday festivals. Here, at Valley Forge, Martha Washington was passing among the sick with deeds and words of cheer, and the aged mother praying in solitude on the banks of the Rappahannock! Of the lady, to whom the Philadelphia letter was addressed, we must, perforce, form doubtful conclusions. That she possessed a personality which found immediate favor in the eyes of men, there is not the least doubt. No man could send her an ordinary message of courtesy unadorned by expressions of gallantry. Alexander Hamilton writes of Mrs. Bland to her husband so warmly that he is constrained to explain, "I write in the style _d'amitie_, not _d'amour_, as might have been imagined." Says Arthur Lee, "Lay me at the feet of Mrs. Bland," prudently adding, "and in the bosom of your friendship."