from my having an army of twenty thousand men, well
armed, I have been here with less than half that number,
including sick, furloughed, and on command; and those
neither armed nor clothed as they should be. In short,
my situation has been such, that I have been obliged to
conceal it from my own officers.

The second letter was written to Congress:

To make men well acquainted with the duties of a
soldier, requires time. To bring them under proper discipline
and subordination, not only requires time, but is a
work of great difficulty; and in this army where there is
so little distinction between officers and soldiers, requires
an uncommon degree of attention. To expect, then, the
same service from raw and undisciplined recruits, as from
veteran soldiers, is to expect what never did, and perhaps
never will happen.

On the 23d of December, 1775, Hale began his
first and only trip to Connecticut for the sake of
securing additional enlistments. If on this one
visit home he became engaged--as some have
believed--to the woman he had so long loved,
now a widow of about nineteen, Alice Adams
Ripley, we may infer that love brightened his
embassy even though patriotism inspired it. No
record remains of the glorified hours he may have
spent in Coventry. We have good reason to believe
that, if he survived the war, he expected to

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