The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1881-01-06

some OlIicuity -f1e stopped, anO
flushed; then he looked her in the face
Now, may l not come and see you
sometimeS?"
Eyes, at proper intervals said
quiet Miss Leigh.
Oyster Eaters.
Possibly the origin of oyster-eating
was something like that of the eating
of roast pig, as described by Charles
Lamb. A prehistoric man inserted his
fingers within the shells of q prehistoric
oyster, and having them pinched ap-
liquor of the oyster, and invented the
way, around the names of all the great
of the earth, in all ages, there is a
deathless halo of oyster shells. The
ancient Greeks and Romans were great
devourers of oysters, which, we learn
from Pliny, were of three colors-yel-
low, black, and brown,-delighted to be
transferred to new waters, and some
times grew to the size of foot, SO that
it took three bites to dispose of one of
them. There were nine famous beds
from which the markets of Rome were
supplied, and it is recorded that the
first man who took to artificial breeding
did so to make money, not out of love
for the oyster. Oyster shells cured no
end of disorders, and, powdered, were
employed rs dentifrice. The Romans
believed that'oysters ate best in the full
of the moon, Horace's preference was
for those of Circel; Vitellius put away
twelve hundred of the bivalves at one
luncheon. "Oysters raw, as many as
you like" is usually the first entry on
the menus of classical entertainments
that have been preserved for our delec-
tation. Louis Will of France, who
died in 1926. SO keenly appreciated his
cooks way of cooking the oyster, of
which he was 80 fond, that he gavo him
patent of nobility and liberal annual
allowance. Louis XI. gave annual oys-
ter suppers to the College of the Sor-
bonne-the pupils of the College of
France had long before that been in the
habit of rehearsing their disputations
over oysters-until at one merry meet
ing a learned doctor fell into the Seine
and was drowned. Bently, the great
classical scholar, never could pass an
oyster-stall without stopping at it, to
talk about oysters if he could eat no
more, and in 1740, two years before his
death, and just at the conclusion of the
twenty-seven years lawsuit to eject him
from the mastership of Trinity, to which
DeQuincy has devoted such a fascinat-
ing essay, he wrote to friend: '.MY
great relief and amusement here is ms
regular supply of oysters. These things
must have been made in heaven; they
are delectable, satisfying, delicious, and
mentally stimulating in high degree"
Pope, a lover of Holsters, was extreme
ly partial to oysters stewed, and letter
of his to Lord Bolingbroke exists, offer
ing to accept an invitation to dinner,
but only on condition that there was a
dish of stewed oysters. Thomson, who
ate peaches on the tree with his hands
in his pockets, greatly loved oysters,
and died of over-indulgence in them,
or of exposure in a boat on his way to
have feed of them. johnson, fancy,
loved oysters. l know he went to mar
ket to buy them for his cat when the
footman was too proud to do so. Gold
smith did, and devoted an interesting
chapter in his animated Nature" to
them, telling how he knew horse that
was fond of eating oysters, and how the
oysters of India are two feet big, and
one of the ''natives" of Coromandel
furnishes a meal for ten men. No
animal, '.Nolr' tells us, will venture to
open the oysters shell, which, like too
many statements in Animated Nat
ure," is not strictly true, since, apart
from the starfish and other marine enc
mics, the oyster is the prey of a bird.
the hamot0pus, the ''bloody foot" of
English popular ornithology and the
oyster-tisher of America.
The oyster-shops of Paris were great
political centers during the revolution,
Robespierre, Danton, and Couthon hav-
ing one favored haunt near the prison
of La Force, and Brissot, Condorcet,
and the other Girondins affecting a III
val establishment near the site of La
Bastille. Peter the Great always had
oysters served in two or three ways at
his meals; fraternized with the old oys-
ter-women of Woolwich ship-yard, and
dignified the dealers of Moscow and st.
Petersburg with the title Of his s'life-
preservers. Juno ate three hundred
oysters every day before breakfast dur
Ing the oyster season, and Cambaceres
was long regarded as the champion
oyster-eater of Paris, until the academi-
clan BaOur-Larmian sat down to break
fast with him one day, ate oyster for
oyster until the arch chancellor of the
empire owned his defeat, then swal-
lowed a few dozen more by himself,
and desisted lest he should spoil his
breakfast. There are traditions of the
English oyster-eaters who swallowed
oysters by the dozen, but the English
oyster is trif1e beside the oyster OF
New York, which reminded Thackeray
of the ear of Caiphas' servant, and
again of swallowing baby. and the
oyster of our more southern waters,
which Sala told his English readers was
in size and shape just like the knife
board of an omnibus. 1t is worthy OF
remark that the oyster is almost the
only animal substance which we eat
raw habitually, and from preference,
and that we do this from sound physlo-
logical reasons. The fawn colored liv-
er of the oyster, as DR.. William Rob
erts in his Lectures on the Digestive
Ferments," points out, is little less than
q mass of glycogen, associated with
which, but Withheld from actual contact
during life; is its appropriate digestive
ferment, the hepatic diastase. The act
of crushing the oyster brings the two
bodies together, and the oyster digests
itself Mem-If you cook an oyster the
heat. destroys the digestive ferment,
and you must digest the oyster yourself.
American oysters do not yield to any
in the world. l have never tried those
of the Occident, and must say that l
prefer to the gigantic growths, especi-
ally of southern waters, that are so much
in vogue, the small and tinely-havored
Caraquette oyster of the Gulf of st.
Lawrence, which, alas! has been some
what driven out of favor by the bigger
Oyster culture pays we'll
in France, where oyster-farms now oc-
cupy some $4,000 acres and the atten-
ton of O,686 persons, the business be-
ing steadily on the increase. The di-
mensions of the business can best be
from the fact that of GAL, ,000,-
600 oysters sold in 1878, only 169, 9,OOO,-
600 came from the fisheries; which,
however, was an increase of 65,000,O0
over 1877. Talking of French oysters,
the most fashionable are those of Mar
epnes and Qstends which are small. but