The poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment--for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle--disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat.

The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly.

The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye.
Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun.
It was a solemn and an awful thing to see.

Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding, not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them.

Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry.