I must here say a word on the subject of Irish stew. A standing dish at headquarters was that Irish stew. Amongst the followers of the army were a number of youths, Spanish and Portuguese, principally the latter, age from sixteen to twenty, happy, on the small consideration of a few dollars per month, to enter the service of any Senhor Inglez who would hire them. Most of the clerks attached to headquarters had a servant of this description; and as each clerk was entitled to draw double rations, the arrangement was convenient. It was the chief business of this servant, to discharge the two very congenial duties of groom and cook; and no one was eligible to the office who could not make Irish stew. "Well, Pedro, what's for dinner to-day?"--The answer was invariable, "Oirish-too." The ration beef--it was generally beef--was popped into a saucepan with anything else that came to hand--bread, onions, leeks, potatoes if you could get them, and just enough water to cover the whole;--then stewed. Whatever the ingredients, still it was "Oirish-too." Now--perhaps the idea never struck you--the true difference between English and foreign cookery is just this: in preparing butcher's meat for the table, the aim of foreign cookery is to make it tender, of English, to make it hard. And both systems equally effect their object, in spite of difficulties on each side. The butcher's meat, which you buy abroad, is tough, coarse-grained, and stringy; yet foreign cookery sends this meat to table tender. The butcher's meat which you buy in England is tender enough when it comes home; but domestic cookery sends it up hard. Don't tell me the hardness is in the meat itself. Nothing of the kind: it's altogether an achievement of the English _cuisine_. I appeal to a leg of mutton, I appeal to a beef-steak, as they usually come to table; the beef half-broiled, the mutton half-roasted. Judge for yourself. The underdone portion of each is tender; the portion that's dressed is hard. Argal, the hardness is due to the dressing, not to the meat: it is a triumph of domestic cookery.--Q.E.D. Well; if time was short--say, a meal to be prepared on coming in from a march, the rations not issued till three hours after, and Pedro ordered to "make haste, and get dinner _depressa_,"--why, then, to appease the wolf in your stomach, the Irish stew was ready in no time--boiled like fury--dished up in half an hour. In that case, you got it in the genuine English style--done in a hurry: the broth watery and thin, the potatoes bullets, and the _bouilli_ shrunk, indurated, screwed up into tough elasticity, by the sudden application of a strong heat, and the potent effect of hard boiling. Engage a "good plain cook"--tell her to boil a neck of mutton--that will show you what I mean. All London necks of mutton come to table crescents--regularly curled. But if, on the contrary, you were in quarters, or the troops halted a day, then you got your Irish stew after the foreign fashion.