The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1891-07-12
ESTABLISHED 1900
CHAP EATS SNAKES
AS WELL AS FLIES, COCKROACHES,
AND OTHER QUEER THINGS.
He Claims to Have Devoured Eighty
Eggs in Half an Hour and Believes He
Can Get Away with Eight Pounds OF
Beefsteak at a Meal

Beefsteak at a Meal.
Chap jackson is an understood, lightweight
colored man, forty years old, who possesses
misfit appetite, which would have excited the
envy of the Cardiff giant before that eminent
humbug passed into state of osseous desue-
tude. If Chap could subdivide his eating ca
pacity, he would make his everlasting fortune
by selling the sections at auction to the horde
of languid dyspeptics and gorged bon yivants
who infest Washington hotels and boarding
houses and look with longing eyes, but rebel
lieus stomachs, at the array of more or less
good things which are set before them in this
bilious weather. But unfortunately for him,
Chaps appetite is as uncomfortable as the
devastating sea and as Unsuitable as the grave,
and poor Chap is its stoop-shouldered slave
instead of its imperious master. 1t keeps
him poor financially, and, with all its voracity,
does little for him physically. No matter
what he gives it, still day and night it grum-
bles and growles for more until there is
hunted look in Chaps eyes, and his cheek
bones loom up above his jowls like the Capt.
tol dome above the flats. But Chap is cheer
full withal and even proud of that appetite,
for while he runs it, or rather it runs him, at
dead loss and keeps his treasury in condi-
ingly to Secretary Foster, still it brings Chap
glory, and that's some consolation.
The great redeeming feature of Chaps APP
petite is that 1t isn't squeamish nor particular.
That is to any great extent. 1t refuses, to be
sure, to put up with the tin can and discarded
hoop-skirt diet which fills with Joy the souls of
common-roaming billy goats; nor will 1t ac-
cept without murmer the hard gravel regi-
men on which idiot-eyed farmyard fowls grow
fat. 1t only draws the line at these short Of
them, everything goes with Chaps appetite.
''I've only eat three snakes, think" Chap
said, in trying to convey with due modesty to
HERALD reporter some idea of the front ele-
walton, ground plan and collateral vagares of
that appetite. IL bought eight from boy at
the Centre market long time ago and had em
let 'em run around on the floor, and police
man saw 'em. ] eat three of 'ein on bet, and
got $5 piece for 'em. Cooked? Oh, no.
boss, eat 'em right down alive. Chewd 'em
up, scales and all, and swallowed 'em. No.
they didn't taste bado I've been bit lots of
times by snakes. They didn't hurt me. Oh
no, I've never eat a rattlesnake, but wouldn't
be afraid to try"
And Chap took out of his pocket fresh
moth-ball, on which he had been chewing all
the while he was talking, and began to MUNICH
1t with as much relish as iii were Huyler bon
bon. The moth-balls scented the room with
the sickening mingled odor of carbolic acid and
camphor, but Chap didn't mind that in the
lcdSJ his eyes SpdThltu anu MS jaws WOTkeU
with apparent relish; and seeing a covy of fat
flies sozzling on dab of paste on a table
near by, he reached over, deftly caught a hand
full of them and opening his capacious mouth
to its full width, threw them in to the hopper to
be ground up with the moth balls. Then Chap
smiled complacently, whether at the surprise
of his audience or the superior flavor of the
paste-fattened flies, was uncertain.
Then proceeding In his artless Cupepsr
Court House fashion to further expatiate on
the idiosyncrasies of his appetite, Chap re-
marked that he stood ready TO eat all the flies
delivered to him @. O. ID. at the rate of one
cent per fly. His tariff for spiders, cock
reaches, grasshoppers and other chronological
specimens was the same as for flies, but he in
dicated preference for the last-named insect.
He said he was also accustomed TO eat small
birds, feathers and all.
The singularly universal character of the
material with which Chaps appetite success
fully dealt was only equaled by the quantities
OF food he declared it able TO dispose of. He
told some astonishing stories OF immense meals
he had made, and as Chap was born in the
same State as George Washington, and bears
good character generally, The HERALD man
did ot.haYe the temerity to question the truth
of his assertions.
81 eat two lOayes of bread and drunk half
gallon of coffee for breakfast this morning.
he said, 'but that was a very light breakfast
for me, and pye been hungry ever since and
have picked up little lunch here and there
around town, besides eating these mothballs.
How much can | eat / don't know exactly,
sir, as I've never eat until / couldn't eat any
more There's a horseman out in Chicago
they want TO bring on here and match against
me eating beefsteak. He says he can eat seven
pounds of beefsteak without stopping. /
don't know how much | can eat, for / never
tried, but if he Will eat seven pounds I'll eat
eight That's all I've got to say. / once eat
sixty-fve eggs in twenty-five minutes In
match with a man at the University of Vir-
ginia. and another time eat eighty-one eggs,
soft boiled, on a bet. Oh, whisky and beer
don't have much effect on me. always drink
half pint of whisky at time, when l can
get it. One day man down on Louis
lana avenue took me into saloon
to treat rne and told the barkeeper
to give me what l wanted. ! asked for half
pint of whisky, and that man don't treat me
no mo- ] can drink dozen bottles of beer
one after another, and they don't have much
effect on me. | drink coal oil when | can get
it, but don't like the oil they have in the
stores. It's TOO clear The best oil Is the
blue looking stuff that you get up in Penn
sylyania | send for some of it occasionally.
l don't mind the taste of it any more. 1t
tastes like water to me. 1t doesn't make me
drunk, only just a little sleepy.
"Onee a gentleman up on street made
match between me and another colored man
to elt gJ0rter pOund of paVenue OeDDpF. |