A couple of benches and a table occupied the center of the house, and sacks of flour and other provisions stood in the corners. Out in the forest, behind the cabin, was a cooking-stove, with a sort of awning over it. This was the kitchen; and certainly the cook could not complain of want of room; but, judging from our supper, he was not called upon to go through any very difficult maneuvers in the practice of his art. He knocked off his rifle practice about half an hour before supper to go and light the kitchen fire, and the fruits of his subsequent labors appeared in a large potful of tea and a lot of beefsteaks. The bread was uncommonly stale, from which I presumed that, when he did bake, he baked enough to last for about a week. After supper, every man lighted his pipe, and though all were sufficiently talkative, the attention of the whole party became very soon monopolized by two individuals, who were decidedly the lions of the evening. One of them was a man from Illinois, who had been in the Mexican war, and who no doubt thought he might have been a General Scott, if he had only had the opportunity of distinguishing himself. He commented on the tactics of the generals as if he knew more of warfare than any of them; and the awful yarns he told of how he and the American army had whipped the Mexicans, and given them “particular hell,” as he called it, was enough to make a civilian’s hair stand on end. Some of his hearers swallowed every word he said, without even making a wry face at it; but as he tried to make out that all the victories were gained by the Illinois regiment, in which he served as full private, two or three of the party, who knew something of the history of the war, and came from other States of the Union, had no idea of letting Illinois have all the glory of the achievements, and disputed the correctness of his statements. Illinois, however, was too many for them; he was not to be stumped in that way; he had a stock of authentic facts on hand for any emergency, with which he corroborated all his previous assertions. The resistance he met with only stimulated him to greater efforts, and the more one of his facts was doubted, the more incredible was the next; till at last he detailed his confidential conversations with General Taylor, and made himself out to be a sort of a fellow who swept Mexicans off the face of the earth as a common man would kill mosquitoes.