A NOVEL CONTEST

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9630, 10 April 1917, Page 7

A NOVEL CONTEST

(By "Orion,” in "Daily Express.

One of the most debated stories in that wonderful .out-of-print book of mine, "Boans and Buck,” was the story of a pease pudding eating contest I witnessed when a boy from the lofty height Of a street lamp standard exactly opposite tho first floor window, of the publichouse in which the contest was held. Eevenge on the doubters of the truth of that story was- awarded me in lull, when accompanied by tho "Daily Express” boxing expert as a witness, 1 followed my thoughtful Cheery I und friend through a maze of darkened Aldgat© streets. After a long walk he suddenly turned down a courtyard and pushed open the swing-door of the Still and Star public-house in Harrow- alley, Aldgate, and introduced us to Mr Jx, H. Haven, the proprietor, as "two of my friends come to see the pease pudding eating contest.” Mr Haven is one of those genial men who go through the world making friends, and after a ten minutes preliminary conversation with him in the "drawingroom side” of the house, where "betting, gambling, and bad language are strictly prohibited,” and “no drink under 2Jd is served on this side,” he waved us to the popular portion of the establishment, where we soon found ourselves rubbing shoulders with about 50 of the Men who Do Things—mostly slaughtermen and lightermen, I was informed. MYSTIC RITES. There Mr Haven left ns while he went upstairs to boil the pease pudding to white heat. There’s no tear or favour about these contests. Each portion is carefully -weighed, and of the nature and quality demanded by the consumer. While the landlord was performing the mystic rites in the room, above we found it an easy matter to engage in© men in conversation. I was introduced to one as “a fellow slaughterman.” Ho looked Up from his game of domiuoes interestedly. After a few seconds* scrutiny he asked, "What's your specialty ?” " 'Kid/" I replied, looking him firmly in the eye. "Mine's bullocks.” he said with a superior air, absent-mindedly putting the double-six against the five-two, and pegging the unearned points. One of the important rules of dominoes is that an onlooker must not interfere during a game. It's a good rule. too. Always mind your own business. You can be put in the wrong so easily if you interfere. Look how silly we should have looked, for ' instance, if we had uttered our thoughts that it was hardly fair to expect a deaf and dumb man to compete in the pease pudding competition with men in possession of all their faculties. Yet he knew the rules of the game so well that he ran out the easiest winner on record! I wonder whether you’ve ewer been packed with about 60 other men in tho small, low-ceilinged room of a building erected in the year 1700-something, -with a roaring fire at one end thrown in. The heat was terrific, but we forgot all discomforts when tho five competitors stepped forward to undergo the usual preliminaries. It was, indeed, a strange scene as the landlord, in his whit© shirt sleeves stepped Into the .ring .formed by the spectators—many of whom had taken up positions of vantage on the unnsed tables—and bound behind their backs the hands of the competitors. The spectators’ remarks were very much to the point, hut 1 wouldn’t like to say they had the better of the verbal encounters. THE EAR TEST. , When the bound men had taken their seats a stentorian voice called for right of way. A minute or so later the landlord appeared with five white hot plates, each piled high with a hissing mass of boiling yellow pease pudding. Arranging them in .position deftly before tjie seated competitors, he warned all that the man. who ate a piece or tried to cool his porridge before the judge gave the starting signal would be disqualified.

Suddenly the signal to start was rapped out. The man on whom X had mentally put my money was a cleanshaven lighterman at my end of the table. "This’ll be something for 'em to cackle about on the river to-mor-row," he said. Then he bent hie ear to his pudding to test the heat. ’"That’s the man for me." I said to my companion. "He’s an old hand at -it. He’s cautious, you see.” It’s human nature, you know, to watch your own horse during the race, and while I was just beginning to wonder whether my champion wasn’t leaving it a little bit too long, a general shout of "Look at Leafy 1 A hundred to one on Leafy!’’ caused me to shift my eyes to the centre figure of t|ie five. All I could see of him was the top and back of his head. His face was completely buried, in the plate before him. Unlike the others, he lifted not his head to observe the .progress of his rivals. He knew _ how _to run his race right though. His thin wisps of fair straggling hair gradually became jewelled with bead« of perspiration. The beads grew larger and larger, until he appeared to bo wearing a chaplet of S earls. Occasionally he winced when e discovered an extra hot "pocket” of pudding, but he kept his head down gallantly until the white of the plate began to show through. What a shout went up when, having lapped up the last remnant of peas, he raised his head and showed us a happy, smiling face streaked with yellow. His long, drooping moustache was festooned with yellow "icicles." He couldn't, of course, hear a sound of the tremendous hubbub that greeted his victory, hut he could see by his own empty plate and the practically full ones of_ his rivals that he was a Flying Fox kind of winner.

Hereabouts a base trick was played on him by a spectator. Seizing one of the also ran‘s platefuls he pushed it in front of the deaf mute, and motioned to'him that he had to finish off that lot, too. It occurred to me that he considered it a bit of a hardship, but being a sportsman, he got going immediately. I’m not sure even now whether compassion or economy was uppermost in the mind of the other spectator who suddenly removed the plate with the remark, "It's wicked waste with peas at eightpenc© a pound. He’s had his share for one night.” The competitors’ fetteps having been removed, the company broke up into littie groups to talk it all group was a man who said : —"Not one of ’em understands the game. The thing to do la to get the plate in your teeth and turn the pudden out on the table. It soon cools, and you can scorf it up in no time.” On being asked sarcastic ally why he didn't go in for it if he knew so much about it he replied:— I believe in givin’ others a chawnce. Then to me:—“What would you do, guv norr "If I were the winner of that handsome lot of fish knives and forte, 1 replied, "I would willingly exchange them for a pot of cold cream. Look at his face.” . j The dumb man smiled at mo and patted himself on the chest as the winner. He looked as if he had been on the east coast for a couple of months in midsummer. There wasn t a hit of skin on his nose o r chin! But. ho went off looking as cheerful as possible with his first prize under his arm and talking with his fingers to a deaf and dumb friend—a Belgian, I was informed.