Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — A Dinner as Peter the Great Gave It. [ARTICLE]

A Dinner as Peter the Great Gave It.

At one of the grand dinners given by the Czar, a huge pie was placed in the center of the gentlemen's table, out of which, when the startled carver broke the crust, a beautiful dwarf lady, in purls naturalibus, all except a headdress, stepped, proposed in a set speech and drank in a glass of wine the health of the company, and then retired into her snug retreat and was carried from the table. A man dwarf was substituted at the ladies’ table. Did not Peter say he could reform his people, but not himself? A dinner party at the Czar’s must indeed have been a sight not conceivable out of Bedlam, and could only have been planned in the maddest brain on earth, if a manuscript among the Sloane papers in the British Museum is believable. Such practical jokes! such wild, grotesque gamboling! the frolics of leviathan! the laughter of Titan, as frightful in his fun as in his fury! There was accommodation at the Czar’s table for about a hundred; but the grim humorist always issued invitations to twice or thrice that number, and left his guests to elbow, jostle and fight for chairs and places, and retain them against all comers and claimants if they could. Not unfrequently a free fight was extemporized and nosea- tapped, and even the sacred portions of Ambassadors have been profanely touched and trifled with. The Czarsat at the head of the table, a broad grin on his face, rolling the spectacle like a sweet morsel under his tonge. The guests are so closely packed that feeding room is not £o tbe thought of, and ribs are often blackened and almost driven in by active and vigorous elbows, provoking fierce recriminations and quarrels. The kitcheri-is so near to the dining hall that there floats through the latter a fragrance of onions, garlic and trainoil, mellowed and tempered by the more delicious aroma of the roast. The more knowing and initiated guests wave away soups and such like edibles, and manifested a special appetite for tongues, hams and viands that cannot be tampered with, or made the vehicle of practical joking, for as often as not it happens that a bunch of dead mice will be drawn out of the soup or discovered snugly imbedded in a dish of green peas; and sometimes, when his guests have well partaken of certain pastries, the Czar will courteously inquire if the, cat, wolf, raven or other unclean animal proved a savory or delicious morsel, with what result let the imaginative guess. The approach to a a regular Donnybrook was hastened on by liberal supplies of brandies, strong ales and winds so adroitly served out as to expedite the grand climacteric of drunkenness.—[Belgfavia.