"[612]
[Footnote 608: Chesterfield, _Letters_, IV. 260 (ed. Mahon).]
[Footnote 609: _Wolfe to his Father, 7 Aug. 1758_, in Wright, 450.]
[Footnote 610: _Pitt to Grenville, 22 Aug. 1758_, in _Grenville Papers_,
I. 262.]
[Footnote 611: Pouchot, _Derniere Guerre de l'Amerique_, I. 140.]
[Footnote 612: _Letter from Camp, 12 June, 1758_, in _Boston Evening
Post._ Another, in _Boston News Letter_, contains similar statements.]
Here, as in all things, he shared the lot of the soldier, and required
his officers to share it. A story is told of him that before the army
embarked he invited some of them to dinner in his tent, where they found
no seats but logs, and no carpet but bear-skins. A servant presently
placed on the ground a large dish of pork and peas, on which his
lordship took from his pocket a sheath containing a knife and fork and
began to cut the meat. The guests looked on in some embarrassment; upon
which he said: "Is it possible, gentlemen, that you have come on this
campaign without providing yourselves with what is necessary?" And he
gave each of them a sheath, with a knife and fork, like his own.
Yet this Lycurgus of the camp, as a contemporary calls him, is described
as a man of social accomplishments rare even in his rank. He made
himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, with many of whom he
was on terms of intimacy, and he did what he could to break down the
barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars.
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