A GLASS EATER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3026, 8 March 1881, Page 4

A GLASS EATER.

One of the most startling stories which Mr Lawrence Oliphant brought back from the East lias been almost capped by the Toronto Daily Mail. Mr Oliphant declares that he saw the followers of a certain Sheikh Bussinn About on, whose present address is the Meiclan, Damascus, devour live scorpions and snakes, and then finish off this repast by chewing and swallowing niouthfuls of glowing, red-hot charcoal. Mr Oliphand declares that he not only saw this done, but that ho felt the sickening smell of burning flesh as they " crunched the glowing morsels." Our Canadian contemporary tells us quite as seriously as Mr Oliphant that a stranger has arrived at Toronto whose 'crunching' abilities rival those-of tho charcoal and scorpion eaters of Damascus. Arriving on Monday night at the bar of the Windsor Hotel, this stranger bit a piece out of a beer glass and munched it to powder. He took another bite, and then another, until nothing but the bottom of the glass remained. He did not swallow the glass but ' spat it out in a half-crystal-lised and half-powdered form on the floor." He then demolished another glass in the same way, and to oblige the excited crowds which watched him with amazement, he ate up a " bummer's glass," a glass which is two-thirds bottom, and is about as thick again as an ordinary tumbler. When he finished the last morsel of the bummer's glass, those present declared themselves satisfied that the stranger could eat up the Crystal Palace and enjoy the feast. As Mr Oliphant's sheikh and this Toronto stranger would make the fortune of any showman, it is to be hoped that they will no longer allow sxich potentiality of wealth to remain unutilised.