A CURIOUS DINNER-PARTY.

Evening Star, Issue 3369, 6 December 1873, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CURIOUS DINNER-PARTY.

The New York Trihum thus describes “ a difficulty,” iu a “genteel and expensive” hotel, the Utis House, Atchison, Kansas ; “One hundred ladies, gentlemen, and children were eating their dinners m it on Sunday, July G. At what stage of tbe feast they hail arrived, whether they were busy with soup or with walnuts, we know not; but being at the beginning, middle, or end of the carte , they wore suddenly astonished, an i dropped spoon, foi k, or nut-pick in the greatest alarm ; for there was Mr Jacob 8. Hoke discharging the contents of his revolver at Mr William M. Marbourg, who stood at the entrance, and was returning Mr Hoke’s compliment shot for shot. Here was a pleasant state of things for the gentlemanly landlord, for the gentlemanly head waiter, for tho ungeutlemanly tail waiters, and last, and of course least, for tbe ladies and gentlemen who were dining, an 1 some of whom might have had tidbits on their way from plate to mouth at tbe very moment of the first explosion. To put it mildly, this little interruption occasioned a stir. Ladies screamed, children cried, both made pell-mell for the door, as if the Otis House were very much on fire, The combatants, however, continued the battle with great spirit. Mr Marbourg received a shot in the arm. An unfortunate colored waiter received a shot in the cheek, and must have howled horribly. Hoke was seized by the friends with whom he had been diuing, and was disarmed. The wounded Marbourg went in search of a surgeon. The wail of woman subsided. The.men who had crawled under the taldea emerged from their bomb-proofs. The correspondent of the Leavenworth Commercial, who appears to have been an eye-wit-ness of these lively transactions, went to his den, and improving the opportunity, sent to his newspaper a graphic description of the light, in the course of which he gravely and wisely remarked that * tbe fact of these men having so little regard for the lives of others as to carry a personal fight into a large hotel and open fire in the midst of women and children, renders them deserving of punishment of n© ordinary seventy.’ Not very grammatical, perhaps, but good sound sense, and a conclusion to be disputed by nobody who loves to dine in peace and safety. Is the reader curious to know the occasion of this malapropos monomachy ? Will anybody be astonished out of his senses to learn that a woman—Mrs Hoke, in fact—was at the bottom of the difficulty ? Will it be ungallant if we observe that, ‘ ’Tis ever thus Mrs Hoke had discarded her true and lawful husband, and cast her fortunes with Marbourg. Hence the spoiling of the dinner in the utis-house, Atchison, July G, 1573.”