PROFESSIONAL DINERS-OUT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9034, 21 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

PROFESSIONAL DINERS-OUT.

HOW THEY MANAGE TO PRESERVE

THEIR HEALTH. Horace Pokter, who is a slender, wellproportioned man of forty-eight or so, with a grey moustache and imperial, and who is probably after Chauncy Depew, the bestknown after-dinner speaker in this country, explained to a Brooklyn Eagle writer the other day how he was able to keep up the public-banquet racket as he does. Said he : " If a man ate all the courses that were set before him, he would be a digestive wreck in six months. No man can stand the strain of endless entries, particularly if he is to say anything when the feeding is over. And ho is wise if he refrains from looking upon the wine-cup when it is red and saves himself for tho champagnes. Any constitution, even the strongest, is soon undermined by those heavy feeds, and I learned long ago to pick out a simple dish or two on 7uenu and stick to those, eating heartily of those and leaving the others alone. If the soup be of a simple sort I eat it all, but turtle soup, mulligatawny, and the like I let severely alone. Then I get a good bit of roast somewhere along the list; a vegetable, 0 salad, with a oit of cheese and a cup of coffee, make my meal; and I am ready for speech-making after, with a light heart and stomach and a clear head. I drink a little sherry sometimes with soup ; but champagne is my dinner tipple, and I find it always stimulates instead of clouding the brain. Depew follows my tactics, too, I think. He always gets a good bite of the ham and is fond of chicken in any form; but he eschews the entrdea and all their works, and never drinks more than two wines. If we hadn't got down to some such system long ago wo would never have been able to live up to the necessities of the situation. I've seen diners come and go. They eat heartily of < everything, drink all the wines, keep their wits at the topmost stretch for three or four hours. That goes on for a few years, and either they begin to get dull and cloudy, to tell old stories and tell them over and over, to take ollence easily and be quarrelsome, and so get left out when lists of invitations are being made up, or else they screw themselves up to tho point with brandy drank before dinner, and directly you hear of their being whisked off somewhere for complete rest, victims to nervous prostration and paresis, or olse down they go with a crash—apoplexy, heart disease, or something of the kind. In reality they have been burning their candle at both ends, making tho brain and the stomach do their utmost at the same time. Moderation is a virtue which tho professional diner - out must learn early in life, or things are going to be unpleasant for him before lie is through."—American paper.