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appearance at Philadelphia. As a hint to the recently convened Congress, the delegate from Virginia insisted on wearing the same red and blue uniform he had worn during his skirmishes with the Indians a dozen years before. But although he made an excellent martial impression, it was also noted by certain irreverent delegates that a tendency to corpulence had now made him rather too large for the old uniform he was wearing.
    “One expected,” said Hancock, “the sound of ripping and tearing every time he rose from dinner at Barnes’ Tavern, and waddled forth to mount his long-suffering horse.”
    Hancock went to his grave furious that it was Washington and not he who had been chosen to command the Continental Army. Narrowly to miss such greatness is a bitter thing; and greatness seemed inevitable that summer. At Lexington and Bunker Hill we had held our own in the face of the best army in the world. Also, the British were 3,000 miles from home and forced to fight in a wild country-side where their specialty, the fixed battle, was of no use to them against the strategy they most feared, the constant sniping of invisible riflemen.
    Despite our green confidence at Cambridge, Washington himself must have wondered if it was possible to make an army out of such unlikely human material. Beside the river Charles were assembled thieves, ruffians, wild men from the forest, murderers, Negroes run away from their southern owners, European adventurers ... every sort of scoundrel save one, the soldier. Hardly a man cared about the issue of England. The majority had enlisted because they wanted money, paid in advance. Even the non-mercenary patriots were of little use to Washington, particularly those New Englanders who saw themselves as generals to a man and refused to serve in the ranks. Yet we thought it would be a brief war.
    As Washington rode off, a stocky youth turned to me and made some observation about His Excellency’s language. We both laughed; and together walked toward the river.
    “I’m Captain James Wilkinson from Maryland.” He introduced himself. I was filled with envy. Here I was an experienced nineteen-year-old man of the world while Captain Jamie Wilkinson was an eighteen-year-old boy with a face that had yet to know the scrape of a razor. Jamie had enlisted in the army at Georgetown, after a short career studying medicine. “Now I want to see fighting. But where? When?” He indicated Boston in the distance—and the British headquarters. He shook his head. “A sweet situation.”
    We got on well from the beginning and Jamie always said that from that day he had found in me the best friend he was ever to have. Would that I had been his enemy!
    “Indian shoes for sale!” Sitting cross-legged in the dust, a pale fat frontiersman displayed several pairs of crudely made moccasins to a crowd of idlers. It was a bit like a fair, those early days of the encampment before Washington’s discipline was felt.
    A bare-foot farmer bought himself a pair, the salesman talking all the while. “There’s a lot of wear in them shoes, I promise. Made ’em myself. Tanned ’em, too.” All around us a good deal of mysterious giggling as the moccasins were passed from hand to hand and carefully examined. Mysterious until we realized that these Indian shoes were just that.
    “I shot me two braves on the way here from Frankfort where I live. Well, after I shot ’em, I took a good look at these two sizable bucks just layin’ there. A shame, I said to myself, to let all that fine meat go to waste. So I skinned ’em both from the waist down and cured their hides in the sun. I’m a tanner by trade. And then I made up these nice shoes that are every bit as good as cow. See?” He held up one of the moccasins. “Here’s some bristles left, a proper memento, you might say. Oh, it’s real Indian hide, I promise.”
    At the bridge over the Charles River, we found General Washington and his aides. The General was staring at the