to our dear absent friends,"—of whom one was her absent husband,—"could they but be informed of it."
From this time, all public events are recorded with admirable brevity and accuracy (Cæsar would have respected Elizabeth Drinker): the battle of Germantown, the difficulty of finding shelter for the wounded soldiers, the bombardment and destruction of the three forts which guarded Franklin's chevaux de frise and separated General Howe from the fleet, the alarming scarcity of provisions before the three forts fell. Despite her Tory sympathies and her husband's banishment, Elizabeth sends coffee and wine whey daily to the wounded American prisoners; rightly thinking that the English ran a better chance of being looked after in the hospitals than did her own countrymen. She suffers no molestation save once, when, as she writes, "a soldier came to demand Blankets, which I did not in any wise agree to. Notwithstanding my refusal, he went upstairs and took one, and with good nature begged I would excuse his borrowing it, as it was by General Howe's orders."
