[T] John H. Kinzie used to tell how, as a boy, he learned to read from a spelling-book which was unexpectedly found in a chest of tea, and that books were associated with the smell of tea in his mind forever after. They had the lake for coolness and beauty in summer; the forest for shelter, warmth and cheer in winter; masses of flowers in spring, and a few--very few--fruits and nuts in autumn, such as wild grapes and strawberries, wintergreen-berries, cranberries, whortleberries, hazel-nuts, walnuts, hickory-nuts, beech-nuts, etc. There was no lack of game to be had for the hunting, or fish for the catching. The garrison had cattle, therefore there was doubtless fresh beef, milk and butter. So a "good provider," as John Kinzie doubtless was (we know that he was the soul of hospitality) would be certain to keep his wife's larder always full to overflowing. The garrison officers' families made company for each other and the Kinzies and Jouetts; the soldiers gave protection and a thousand other services to all, and the two fifers and two drummers made music--such as it was. This rude melody was not all they had, however, for John Kinzie was a fiddler as well as a trader and a silver-smith ("Shaw-nee-aw-kee," or the "silver-smith," was his Indian name), and in the cool summer evenings, sitting on his porch, would send the sound of his instrument far and wide, over river and plain, through the dewy silence of the peaceful landscape. They had love and marriage, birth and death, buying and selling and getting gain; and, happily, had not the gift of "second sight," to divine what lay before them; what kind of end was to come to their exile. Mr. Wentworth's Fort Dearborn speech (Fergus' Historical Series No. 16, page 87) quotes a letter he had received from Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War under President Garfield. From it we learn that no muster-roll of the garrison at Fort Dearborn in 1811 or 1812 is on file at the War Department, but that the general returns of the army show that the fort was garrisoned from June 4, 1804, to June, 1812, by a company of the First Regiment of Infantry. In these returns the strength of the garrison, officers, musicians and privates, is given as follows: Under Captain John Whistler, June 4, 1804, 69; Dec. 31, 1806, 66; Sept. 30, 1809, 77. Under Captain Nathan Heald, Sept. 30, 1810, 67; Sept. 30, 1811, 51, and June --, 1812, 53.[U] [U] See Appendix B for a muster-roll dated Dec 31, 1810 (the latest entry which gives names), wherein are shown several who appear later as victims of the massacre. The deficiency of records in the archives of the War Department may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the British, after the so-called "battle" of Bladensburgh, took Washington and burned all the government buildings.