An American Dinner.

Taranaki Herald, Volume L, Issue 12452, 5 January 1904, Page 6

An American Dinner.

* I Compared with the Americans, tho English, as among other pleasHres noted by Froissart, take their dinnei: sadly. I was a guest (writes Mr W. 11. Lucy in the Sydney Morning Herald) the other night at a dinner given by- an American, whose far reaching business connections tiring him to London for some nionths of the year. The guest of the evening was an American senatoi', of world-wide renown as an after-dinner speaker. ]lt«! sat on the right ol the host, another senator of foremost political . position being on his left. These were conditions that promised a decorous evening. They were somewhat akin to an English host, buttressed on one side and the other, say by the Lord Chancellor and Lord Avebury. Things went along pretty ordinarily through j some course of the menu., Then came round a dish not altogether unfamiliar 'at men's parties in London. Tt 1 was bones, but not served in the fashion we are accustomed to — a 1 stout entity, draped with a serviette I and a silver spoon, constructed so a>to extract all the marrow. They were the bones in nightly use with Christy Ministrels. At the remote end of the room was a string band, which vigorously struck up the oncefamiliar tune of "Dixey."' In a moment tho Americans, of whom th<" company chiefly consisted, were 011 their feet, accompanying the lilting tune with a clash of bones. After this hilarious interlude, there was comparative* pause. A little later the Chairman, a man up to his nock in tho finance of two worlds, produced from under his chair a banjo. The band struck up the tune, "Way down upon the Swanneo River." The bones clattered accompany - I ment, and the host played the banjo with a gusto that would have .shamotl the Corner man in the Ohi'isty Minstrels, banging himself in excellent time, on the elbows, knees, toes, now and then on his massive head. j It was a trivial circumstance, but I confess it impressed me deeplj' with the distinctive character of our cousins across tho Atlantic. Everybody at the table was somebody—politicians, statesmen, literary men, past-. I ners in colossal firms, or, as in tho case of the senators, in the front ' rank of political affairs in the United States. Yet in a moment, at the ' sound of the music, at a sight of the | ' bones, they wore all a romping lot of schoolboys, full of life and energy, which made the very few Englishmen present stare aghast. I am bound to say the senators did not excel in the bones, but when it came to speechmaking, each delivered one of those charming discourses which are the despair of all but some dozen Englishmen. T suppose the next morning they would all go down to their respective offices as sombre, as hard-headed, j as shrewd in making a deal as if they had never held a pair of bones he•tween thumb and finger.