Congress lavished praise upon General Washington, but he replied, 'You pay me compliments as if the merit of the affair was due solely to me; but I assure you the other general officers who assisted me in the plan and execution have full as good a right to the encomiums as myself.'" "Possibly that was only just," remarked Rosie, "but it strikes me as very generous." "It was just like Washington," said Walter; "our Washington! I'm ever so proud of him!" "As we all are," said his mother; "but we must not forget to give the glory of that victory, and all others, and also of our final success, to him who is the God of battles, and by whose strength and help our freedom was won.

As Bancroft says, 'Until that hour the life of the United States flickered like a dying flame,' but God had appeared for their deliverance and from that time the hopes of the almost despairing people revived, while the confident expectations of their enemies were dashed to the ground.

Lord George Germain exclaimed after he heard the news, 'All our hopes were blasted by the unhappy affair at Trenton.'" "Unhappy affair indeed!" exclaimed Walter.

"What a heartless wretch he must have been, mamma!" "And how our poor soldiers did suffer!" sighed Lulu; "it makes my heart ache just to think of it!" "And mine," said Grandma Elsie.

"It is wonderful how much the poor fellows were willing to endure in the hope of attaining freedom for themselves and their country.
"Thomas Rodney tells us that on the night of the attack upon Trenton of which we have been talking, while Rall caroused and played cards beside his warm fire, our poor soldiers were toiling and suffering with cold and nakedness, facing wind and sleet in the defence of their country.
"The night," he says, "was as severe a night as ever I saw; the frost was sharp, the current difficult to stem, the ice increasing, the wind high, and at eleven it began to snow.