AN UNCANNY DINNER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 142, 6 September 1927, Page 13

AN UNCANNY DINNER

HOST’S PHANTOM GUESTS Dinner for five had been ordered, to be served in a private dining room at the leading hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. Two waiters stood ready. Presently a lone, tall, grey-haired man entered and said: “Please let the dinner be served.” “For one?” asked a waiter. “For five,” replied the lonely guest Course after course was served; and the tall, grey-haired man dined alone with his thoughts. As he finished each course the four untouched portions were removed by the wondering waiters, to whom the stranger gave no explanation. He was Paul J. Evander, who. 28 years ago, had left his wife and three children in Seattle. Washington State, to go to Klondike in search of gold. Weeks lengthened into months, months lengthened into years, but success evaded Mr. Evander. Then, as he was at last despairing, came his big strike of gold. After winning a fortune he trekked to the nearest trading post, and sent the good news to his wife and children:—“At last we are rich. I will be home in two months.” Back, at last, in Seattle. Evander hurried to his old home. The house whs empty. No one in the growing and changing neighbourhood remembered the Evanders. Finally he began to tour the country in a systematic search; and this enterprise had brought him to Birmingham, Alabama. It was in sorrowing memory of that parting, near the end of last century, that he ordered dinner for five on the anniversary of his start from Seattle for Klondike. Each year, on that day. Mr. Evander will sit down with dinner for five on the table; with four empty chairs for the wife and three grown-up children, who may or may not be alive.