The moment's silence after the toast was broken by McTeague exclaiming with a long breath of satisfaction: "That's the best beer I ever drank." There was a roar of laughter.

Especially was Marcus tickled over the dentist's blunder; he went off in a very spasm of mirth, banging the table with his fist, laughing until his eyes watered.

All through the meal he kept breaking out into cackling imitations of McTeague's words: "That's the best BEER I ever drank.

Oh, Lord, ain't that a break!" What a wonderful supper that was! There was oyster soup; there were sea bass and barracuda; there was a gigantic roast goose stuffed with chestnuts; there were egg-plant and sweet potatoes--Miss Baker called them "yams." There was calf's head in oil, over which Mr.Sieppe went into ecstasies; there was lobster salad; there were rice pudding, and strawberry ice cream, and wine jelly, and stewed prunes, and cocoanuts, and mixed nuts, and raisins, and fruit, and tea, and coffee, and mineral waters, and lemonade.
For two hours the guests ate; their faces red, their elbows wide, the perspiration beading their foreheads.

All around the table one saw the same incessant movement of jaws and heard the same uninterrupted sound of chewing.