The Washington herald., 1914-11-26
Snakes at the Feast.

Philadelphia still claims to be a Sunday school
town and the home of REFORM but it is making such
progress in the line of novelties that it may soon
take rank with Newport, where monkeys are guests
of honor at fashionable uncheons or with Ell Paso
the head center of freaks and fakes. The Phladel-
phia North American is conducting crusade against
champagne and other snake-producng visions of the
banquet board, and the editor has met with such
success as to the prophecy that in the near
future Philadelphia will rely upon realism altogether
and cease to encourage the imagination when good
fellows get together in that town to celebrate a
political victory, inaugurate a reform movement,
demand appropriation for deepening the Delaware
River, glorify the success of John Wanamaker, or
any other institution or event which inspires some
club society to give dinner
This reform was inaugurated recently at a ban
quet in honor of the curator of the Bronx Zoo and
the snakes appeared at the beginning of the feast
instead of making their bows to the guests after the
feast of reason and the flow of soul. There were
big snakes and little snakes, blue snakes and pink
snakes, black snakes and white snakes, still snakes
and squirming snakes; there also were toads and
frogs in great variety, croaking and hopping about
the tables until the guests puzzled as to whether
they had slept through the dinner and only awakened
at the hour for singing "We Won't Go Home Til
Morning" whether they had by some mistake
wandered into the snake house at the instead of
the banquet room. The ladies' however were as
sured that the snakes were perfectly tame and the
banquet proceeded.
The possibilities of this Philadelphia banquet re-
form beyond the realms of prophecy. w. D.
Howells has for years preached realism in tera-
ture and Cyrus Curtis is now preaching realism in
advertising, even though he still induges in the
unreal and the fanciful in the literary pages of his
magazine. Hampton Moore insists that Philadelphia
is always real and substantial especially in Republican
majorities and the Delaware River; and with the
banquet reform inaugurated it can be predicted that
at an early date everything in the City of Brothery
Love will be substantial as the reputation of old
Ben Franklin. This realism will extend to the ban
quet snakes
Col Van Valkenburg has one clinching
argument in favor of prohibition in Philadelphia
There is further excuse for wine or beer or high
ball at the Union League banquets or the birthday
celebrations of Mayor Blankenburg The orators of
Pennsylvania will longer need the old discourager
of hesitancy in speech and Sam Blythe can introduce
the dullest 1--WE have with US tonight, fresh from
the water wagon without fear of the audience going
sleep The snakes the frogs, and the horned toads
which they only imagined in the past win be there in
all their realism to keep everybody awake and won
dering whether he is seeing things or whether he
may not feel something cold and clammy in spite
of the master of ceremonies repeated assurances
that they are tame
1t also may give inspiration for new dances about
on, under tables when either big or little snakes
disappear from view. and there lingering doubts