The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1901-09-07
EXTRAORDINARY DINING ROOMS
Anything From a Barrel to the Swell.Bo'
of an Organ.

An invitation to dine in barrel has
in itself no great element of attraction;
but when the barrel takes the form OF
champagne tun large enough to hold
100000 worth of the seductive bever-
age, and when the dinner is one of
dozen courses, each perfect of its kind,
the temptation assumes quites different
complexion.
This was the invitation issued two
years ago to I55 chosen guests by
Messrs. Fruhinshaltz & Co., of Nancy,
and the dining saloon was a colossal
champagne tun built for the Paris Ex-
position of last year.
This tun was in the shape of an enor-
nous barrel, 81 feet in length and dia-
meter, with a capacity of o2,4oo gallons;
SO capacious was it, in fact, that small
army of 5000 men could have been
packed in its interior. The mere pre-
paration of the wood for its construction
occupied four months; year was spent
IN building it; its cost was f2,4oO and it
was so heavy that strong locomotive
would be required to draw it.
Within this truly regal cask covers
were laid for I55 guests, just as many
as the workmen who had made it; and
for two hours sumptuous feast, rang
ing from an overture of potage la bis
que d'ecrevisses to dessert that would
have tempted Lucullus, was partaken of.
More remarkable even than this
strange banquet was one which, year
ago, tempted the appetite of two dozen
villagers on the northern coast of Nor
way. An enormous whale, Great
Northern rorqual, had drifted ashore,
bringing an unexpected fortune in oil
and blubber and whalebone to its for
tunate finders. He was monster, even
of its kind, measuring eighty feet from
snout to tall and yielded over f2,5oo
in bone and OIL
In honor OF such rich treasure trove
the finders decided to give banquet in
the most novel dining room on record,
the inside of whale, which, after the
removal of the blubber, afforded ample
sitting room for thirty guests. How
far the appetite of the guests was at
fected by the unesthetic atmosphere is
not recorded, but it is said that some of
the diners, toward the end of the meal,
were SO enamored by their quarters
that they expressed the determination to
stay there forever, and were only eject
ed by muscular force.
More than one banquet has been serv-
ed in the interior of large organ. The
most notable, perhaps, was that given
| by the Silbermanns, century ago, in
the magnificent organ of the Royal
Catholic Church, Dresden, when the vox
humane stop was more predominant than
it has ever been since.
| Forty years or more ago ten guests
sat down to a perfect little dinner in
the swell-box of Leeds organ; and the
famous organ of the Sydney Town Hall
was similarly converted into a dining
room in which its health was drunk by
a much more numerous body of diners
1t is no uncommon thing in California
to dine and dance inside the trunk oi
one or other of the enormous tree:
which are so common there, some Of
which are over 900 feet high and ninety
feet in circumference. In the hollow
interior of one of these giants of thu
forest, in Calaveras Grove, a memorable
banquet was given some years ago.
The trunk, which was thirty feet If
diameter, afforded ample accommoda
ton for the fifty guests invited, ant
after the dinner was disposed of anc
the tables cleared away twenty-five
couples danced until far into the morn
ing-Tt- Bits