SOME QUEER DINNERS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 203, 25 August 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

SOME QUEER DINNERS.

It is on record that Von der Goltz. the German Field-Marshal, whose death was recently announced, was once sp>ing in Petrograd, and finding that tuwas recognised, spent some hours eating two parcels of incriminating paper 1 which he dared not bum in the grate. This occurrence recalls some curioie feats in gastronomy. One of these took place at a Covent Garden hostelry famous in the fashionable annals of the eighteenth century. A tipsy gallant, enraptured by the charms of a certa'.i lady, snatched off her shoe, and filing it with champagne, drank a bumpc to her health. Let the chronicler tell the remainder of the story in his own words: "To carry the complim-ut sti'l further he ordered the shoe itself to i* dressed and served up for supper. 'lh« cook set h'-msoif seriously to work upcii it. He pulled the upper part, winch was of damask, into tine shreds, and tossed it up in a ragout, minc?d tne sole, cut the wooden heel into ve . i-ne slices, fried them in butter, and ;■>; "ed them round the dish for a garnish." This feat was certainly formidable, l.u.t it is easily beaten by the less romantic episode which occurred at the dinner of the shoemaker of Don Carlos, the son of Phd : p 11. of Spain. A cer.ain Dr. Rappaport relates it as follows: "The young nobleman at that t.me wore boots with high wide legs, so as to allow a small pistol to be eoaeswloe in them. A shoemaker having sent the Prince a pair of boots with narrow y.-g», Don Carlos went into a fit of fury . ordered the boots to be ci(t up inte small pieces, cooked, and sent over lo the shoemaker for him to eat. According to some accounts the latter was actually forced to swallow h;s own b00t.:,."