The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1881-11-19
MEN OF UNBOUNDED sroMACHs.
Some Of the Great Gluttons Of To-Day and 0
All the Ages That Are Past.


to the present day there Is q bright roll OF mag
nificent or merely mighty feeders, glance at
which Is not without interest 1t Is not very
easy To classify the gutlons of classical times,
for between the man who merely feeds and
consumes an immense amount OF provender
and the man who squanders large fortune
on expensive meals there is or may be vast
difference. For instance, Vitellius-whom
Mr.. Silas Wegg very properly named Vittle.us
spent 81, 000, 900 month for seven months on
his table. When the number OF conv,ves is
considered and the price of the dishes-a ton
OF rare fish and three and half tons OF rare
birds at one banquet IN days when fanclers
paid 1926 for red mullet and "a apiece for
pigeons, the expenditure may not seem exces.
sIve. A man might eat Of a $4,000 dish of
BIRDS tongues, yet not be, IN the ST. let sense OF
the word, a glutton, and nightingales' tongues,
the brains of pheasants and peacocks ana the
rOes of the rarest and most delicate fishes were
not only favorable but common dishes among
the elite of imperial Rome. HeliogObalus is
credited with spending 500, 900 at one supper
and Nero with eating dish costing $150,0O0
and washing 1t down with bumper still more
costly, but this proves nothing, unless 1t be
the sheer idiocy and wastefulness of the con-
wives. A different aspect is touched upon
when the question is Approximation did
they eat! And when 1t Is stated that Verus
increased the number of guests from nine to
twenty, and made his supper coterminous with
the dark, that Nero sat at table twelve hours,
that Tiberius and V;tellius sat there all the
time they were not in bed that Commodus ate
in his bath, and that Domitian carried round
classical sandwich to stay his hunger be-
tween meals, 1t must be admitted that most of
these noble diners were gluttOns.
Maximinian, who ate forty pounds of meat
and drank five gallons Of wine at a repast,
could, at least allege his size. Not SO the
average glutton-not SO, indeed, the modern
glutton. Thus only a few months ago there
died at Kingston, in this state, MIR. Alexander
Grant, Familiarity known rs the "kinderhoOk
glutton," who without any inconvenience
would devour twenty pounds of solids at
sitting, washed down by not less than gallon
of milk and coffee. We read that ''fve pounds
of beefsteak were regarded by him as but an
appetizer and unless such side dishes as halt
peck of potatoes, a whole boiled cabbage, a big
pic, and complete pudding were provided
also he insisted that he had only lunched."
Though he has left us, and his loss we deeply
feel, we are not without some consolation In
| the fac; that Squire Carey still is left us
Squire Carey, of Waikiki, whom his admirlng
friends dub "the man with the rubber stom.
ach." A despatch of recent date informs US
that the Squire swallowed q halfgallon
measure full of oysters and four large plates
of crackers. He then offered TO eat six quarts
more of oysters if any one would pay for them,
but his offer was not accepted. 1t is said that
at one sitting Carey has eaten 400 clans and
at another half barrel of shell oysters" AS
compared with him may be cited Mr. Rom"
Lawson, of Allensville N. c., who on election
day last year are 81 y quarters mutton, 10 bis
cults. pound candy, 2 halfgrown chickens, o
herrngs, loaf corn bread and piece of
shoat supposed to weigh about 1pOund, drank
quarts OF water and said he hadn't eaten half
enough. He then offered to bet he could throw
any man or lift more with hand-stick than
any man on the ground. In order to show
his strength, he took man that weighed 2OO
pounds and carried HIM about over the ground
in his teeth. He then went up to another ia
BILE and called for 25-cent snack" Mr.. Law
son has an honorable rival IN Mr.. Joshua
Joynes, gentleman weighing $50 pounds and
owning to sixty summers, who last summer sat
! down to dinner at OnacOck, AcCOmac county,
| Va, and ate fifteen pounds Of pork, twelve
: links OF bologna sausage, souse from one large
hog, one large goose, one full-grown chicken,
one peck of sweet potatoes, one dozen large
biscuits, one large mlnce-pie and six cups OF
strong coffee. Mr. Joynes sat down to this re.
past at o'clock, and at 80 he had disposed
of every article named, picked out the bones
long ago. in Paris, gentleman known as the
Jackal, on wager, ate 4 p feet of bloodpud-
ding IN twenty minutes, washing it down with
half gallon of wine, thus proving himself
worthy to sit down at the Gargantuan repasts
In Fiji, at which, according to Miss Gordon
Cumming, one sees served twenty puddings,
the largest being twenty feet in circumference.
| James l. treated the question of gluttony
from harshly practical standpoint when, q
distinguished citizen having been presented
to him who ate sheep at a meal, but could
do no more than folk who contented them
selves with a solitary outlet, he desired the
execution of the man as zone that eats as much
as twenty men but cannot do the work of one"
| What would he have done with ClOdius AL
plnus, who devoured a bushel of apples at
once, and for breakfast rendered account Of
500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 pounds OF
grapes, 400 oysters and 100 gnat-snapperss Or
with PhagOn, that distinguished subject OF
Aurelianus, who managed at single meal to
eat boar, sheep ana pig, with 100 loaves
of bread and three gallons OF wine? Hardi-
canute, James's predecessor, earned hOnorably
the title of SwILesmouth, though he satisfied
himself with four meals day. One Mallet, a
counselor atlaw of the time Of Charles l.,
Iquite eclipsed Haydn or the queer customer of
a Paris cafe mentioned in recent issue OF the
World, as on one occasion he ate dinner pro
vided in Westminster Hall for thirty people,
and, his practice not proving equal to his des-
serts and the preliminary courses, had In his
old age to content himself with banquets of
bee's heart and liver. Nicholas Wood, of
Harrison, in Kent, was justly included among
Fuller's Worthless among his claims to fame
being the deglutition at one meal OF a whole
sheep, at another of 800 pigeons, at another of
eighty four rabbits, at q fourth of the victual
provided for thirty men, at a fifth of eighteen
yards Of bodybuilding and at a sixth of a
whole hog, accommodated with three pecks of
damson plums. Master Nicholas mad on one
OCCASION very narrow escape According TO
Taylor, the Water Poet, If he had not been |
scrupulOusly Amounted with oil aud butter he
would surely have died, but Sir Warham St |
Leger nursed him round, and then put him IN