This banquet he finished
in an hour, and then ungratefully complained of not having had enough;
so, after running three hundred yards by way of appetizer, he sat down
with the rest of the company, who had witnessed his prowess, and drank
pretty freely. Yet even this exploit is hardly equal to the marvel in
digestion reported in the same ancient newspaper of a Truro porter,
who, for a bet of five shillings, ate two pairs of worsted stockings
fried in train oil, and half a pound of yellow soap into the bargain.
The losers of this wager might have been more cautious had they known
that the same atrocious glutton once undertook to eat as much tripe as
would make himself a jacket with sleeves, and was accordingly measured
by a tailor, who regularly cut out the materials, when, to general
surprise, the voracious fellow ate up the whole in twenty minutes.
Compared with these performances some of the current prodigies of
gormandism which the papers so often report are surely as trifling
in amount as they are tame and uninventive in the character of their
details.
* * * * *
The strange accident of Albertacce brought to general notice an
obscure Corsican custom which singularly contrasts with the ordinary
funeral ceremonies of Christendom.
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