The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-03-24
BIG EATERS.
London Saturday Review.

"The eaters of my time," wrote Careme, in 1882, "were the Prince de Talleyrand, Murat, Junot, Fontanes, the Emperor Alexander, George ", and the Marquis de Cussy. Men who know how to eat are as rare as great cooks. Look at the great musicians and physicians" he goes on, with en- thusiasm, "they are all gastronomers witness Rossini and Boieldleu, Brous- sais and Joseph Roques." The last named backed this up with his trea- tise on "Edible Mushrooms" main- taining that doctors who make name -Corvisart, Broussais, and half-a- dozen others-are epicures for their patients sake as well as their own. They can get a convalescent to eat when nobody else can; fact which explains their success. Modern Lon- don, too, we are proud to say, can boast it's successful medical gourmets. De Cussy-it is vain to expect an authority from him-said that Leon- ardo da Vinci, Tintoreito, Paolo Yer Onese, Baccio Bandinelli, Guido, and Raphael, were all noted gourmands: a fact which has not yet perhaps had its weight in estimating the naive absti- hence of the pre- Raphelites, who might even have been vegetarians al- most to man, to judge from the type of their landscape gardening. None of the foregoing great men had the beatitude of dying at table like some of the smaller fry. Dr. Gastaldy, a man with wit and palate so often met with in the Almanach deS Gour- mandS, died with a champagne glass in his hand and joke in his mouth. Grimod de la Reyniere's great-grand- fathers death was exactly like-in a fit of laughter, his lips still wet with Ay. Here is fact for MT. Galton; financial instincts, two, were heredi- tary in this family of farmers-g general of the revenue.
 Napoleon, as all the world knows. ate very plain food, and little of it, though always with hunger and rap idly. A little claret was all he drank a single glass of Madeira would flush his whole countenance. He was neither an eater nor judge of eating, wrote Careme, but he was grateful (was hep to NJ. de Talleyrand for the style in which he lived. He differed widely from that poor Stanislas of Poland, who fondly studied onion soup in the inn kitchen at Chalons. Napoleon had a strange theory about his bile. There is no personal defect that man cannot get himself to be vain of, for one reason or another.
 "Don't you know" said he, to the Comte de Segur, "that every man that's worth anything is bilious? Iris the hidden fire. By the help of it's excitement l see clear in difficult junctures.' It wins me my battle!" Careme himself ate sparingly and drank nothing-a sort of Moses of the promised land by choice.
 The skeleton Paganini was an ap- palling glutton, being only beaten in that by Cambaceres. Such men should be objects of pity alone, like the great Athenian chef Archetrastes, who ate enormously and digested with ex- traordinary rapidity. It could not have been assimilation, for, according to Polybius, he looked as if the wind would blow him away, and one could almost sec daylight through him. There is one dear old story that always comes up in talk about great eaters it has been told of all sorts of guzzlers, from city alderman to the judge of appeal at Avignon, under the ancien regime. "And then, sir, we topped up with gorgeous turkey, q first-chop bird-never tasted juicier-melt in the mouth-c crammed with truffies to the eyes bouquet is no word for it-left nothing but the bones." "How many were you?" "Twow "What! only two?" "Yes. Two. Why not? The turkey and myself"
 President National Bank