Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1895 — An Antiquarian Banquet. [ARTICLE]

An Antiquarian Banquet.

This unique and select feast was given more than twenty years ago at Brussels by a resident of that city, himself an antiquarian, says Harper’s Bazar. Only six guests were invited, one of them an American, from whom, as then published, is derived this brief account So dainty a bill of fare can never be repeated. There were apples grown more than 1,800 years ago, and for this modern entertainment taken from an earthen jar rescued from the ruins of Pompeii. Bread was offered made from wheat found in a chamber of one of the pyramids, and raised before the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea; butter, churned when Queen Bess occupied England’s throne-chair, was taken from an earthen crock found on a stone shelf, where for centuries it had been preserved in icy water in one of the wonderful deep wells of Scotland; and wine, “long mellowing through the lapse of years” in a secret vault in the city of Corinth, as far back, so it is affirmed, as the fifteenth century. At this unparalleled array of dainties each guest had a bit of bread, a sip if wine, of butter as much as desired, and the jar of canned apple was freely circulated.