HYPNOTIC HIGH FEEDING.
(Being some Brief Diary Notes of a Coming Little Dinner (New Style), jotted down a few years hence.)
"Your dinner is served. Sir!"
It was the Professorial Butler who made this announcement with a solemn and significant bow. He had undertaken, for the modest fee of half-a-crown, to throw my four guests,—an Epicurean Duke, a couple of noted Diners-out, and a Gourmand of a high order well known in Society,—into a profound hypnotic sleep, under the influence of which, while supplied with a few scraps of food, and slops by way of drink, they were to believe that they were assisting at a most recherché repast, provided by a cuisine, and accompanied by choice vintage wines, both of the first excellence.
I felt a little nervous as we proceeded to the dining-room, but as the Professor adroitly passed his hand over the head of each as he descended the stairs, and pointed out to me the dazed and vacant look that had settled on the features of all of them, I felt reassured, especially when they fell mechanically into their places, and began to peruse, with evident delight, the contents of the Menu, which ran as follows:—
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Soup.
Toast-and-water and Candle-ends.
Fish.
Herrings' Heads and Tails. Counter Sweepings. Entremets. Rotten Cabbage-stalks. Entrée. Odds and Ends of Shoe Leather. Roast. Cat's Meat. Sweet. Old Jam-pot Scrapings on Musty Bread. |
That they didn't all rise like one man with a howl of execration on reading this was soon explained when the Professorial Butler set down a soup-plate before the Epicurean Duke and with an insinuating smile, simply announced it as Tortue claire. It was clear from this that they were under the impression that they were partaking of a first-class little dinner, and had read the Menu at the will of the Professorial Butler, as he subsequently explained to me in such fashion that the toast-and-water soup, in which the candle-ends played the part of green fat, appeared to them in the light of the finest "clear turtle." "And how about the Herrings' Heads and Tails?" I asked. "They take that for Saumon de Gloucester, sauce Pierre Le Grand," was the bland reply, a fact which at that moment the Gourmand endorsed, by smacking his lips and with an ejaculation of "Sublime salmon that! I'll take a little more," holding out his plate for a second helping. The Cabbage-stalks figured in their imagination as "Asperges d'Italie, en branches glacées à la Tour d'Amsterdam," while the pennyworth of plain cat's meat, passed more than muster as "Filet de Bœuf en Diplomat, braisée à la Prince de Pékin." The Shoe-leather and Jam-pot Scrapings brought the Menu to a triumphant close, with "Ris de Veau pralinée au boucles Menschikoff," and "Bombardes Impérials de Péru" respectively.
I confess, when I heard one of the Diners-out asking for Champagne, and saw his glass filled with Harvey's Sauce and water, with the announcement that it was Dry Monopole Cuvée Réservée, I felt some momentary misgivings, but they were speedily put to flight on my noticing the evident gusto with which he emptied his glass, at the same time pronouncing it to be "a very fine wine," which he assigned to the vintage of '76. I own too I felt a little nervous when the Professorial Butler, I think not without a sly twinkle in his eye, gave all the party a liqueur of petroleum for Green Chartreuse, but they certainly seemed to find it all right, and so my apprehensions disappeared.
Thus my "Little Dinner" came at length to a conclusion. That it was an undoubted success, from a financial point of view, there can be no sort of doubt, for fourpence more than covered the cost of the materials, to which, adding the Professorial Butler's fee of two shillings and sixpence, brings the whole cost of the entertainment up to eightpence-halfpenny a head. It is true I have not heard whether any of my guests have suffered any ill-effects from partaking of my hospitality, but I suppose if any of them had died or been seized with violent symptoms, the fact would have been notified to me. So, on the whole, I may congratulate myself. I certainly could not afford to entertain largely in any other fashion, but, with the aid of the Professorial Butler, I am already contemplating giving a series of nice "Little Dinners," and even on a more extended scale. Indeed, with the assistance of Hypnotism, it is possible, at a trifling cost, to see one's friends. And in the general interests of Society, I mean to do it.