When we came to the place we found the foresters watching the dachshunde. These I discovered to be long, flat, shallow dogs with stumpy legs—a dog which an American has described as “looking as if he was always coming out from under a bureau.” Very cautiously here and there the foresters uncovered a burrow, and a dachshund disappeared. Then from below ground came the sounds of fighting. The dachshunde had found their prey. The foresters ran about, stooping to locate the sound. When they discovered the spot a dozen of them at once began to dig as fast as they could.
Presently a writhing, rolling, barking bunch of fur and flying sand came into view, when a forester with a long forked stick caught the animal just back of its head and flung it into a coarse sack, which was then tied up and thrown aside, and the hunt went on. After we all went home the foresters gathered up these bags and killed the poor little animals somehow—mercifully, I hope.
The dinner, which came at two o’clock, was so much of a function, on account of the number of guests in the house, that it impressed itself upon my memory.
First in the salon there were small tables set, containing hors d’oeuvres. There were large decanters containing vodke, a liquor something like Chinese rice-brandy. There were smoked goose, smoked bear, and salmon, white and black bread, all sorts of sausages, anchovies and caviar, of course. After these had been tasted largely by the guests who were not Americans, and who knew that a formidable dinner yet had to be discussed, we were all seated at a table in the grand dining-room.
There were a hundred of us, and the table held enough for twice that many. We began with a hot soup made of fermented beet-juice. This we found to be delicious, but I seemed to be eating transparent red ink with parsley in it. This was followed by a cold soup made of sour cream and cucumbers, with écrevisse, a small and delicious lobster. There was ice in this.
Cucumbers and sour cream! Let me see, wasn’t it President Taylor who died of eating cherries and milk?
Then came a salad of chicken and lettuce, and then huge roasts garnished with exquisite French skill.
After the sweets came the fruit, such fruits as even our own California cannot produce, with white raspberries of a size and taste quite indescribable. When dinner is over comes a very pretty custom. The hostess, whose seat is nearest the door, rises, and each guest kisses her hand or her arm as he passes out, and thanks her in a phrase for her hospitality. Sometimes it is only “Thank you, princess”; sometimes “Many thanks for your beautiful dinner,” or anything you like. They speak Polish to each other and to their servants, but they are such wonderful linguists that they always address a guest in his own language. To their peasants, however, who speak an unlearnable dialect, they are obliged always to have an interpreter.
At six o’clock came tea from samovars four feet high and of the most gorgeous repoussé silver. Melons, fruit, and all sorts of bread are served with this. Then at eight a supper, very heavy, very sumptuous, very luxurious.
The whole day had been charming, exhilarating, different from anything we had ever seen before; but there was to follow something which impressed itself upon my excitable nerves with a fascination so bewildering that I can think of but one thing which would give me the same amount of heavenly satisfaction. This would be to have Theodore Thomas conduct the Chicago orchestra in the “Tannhäuser” overture in the Court of Honor at the World’s Fair some night with a full moon.