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THE DINNER PARTY.
They sat down to an island dinner, remarkable for its variety and excellence; turtle soup and steak, fish, fowls, a sucking pig, a cocoanut salad, and sprouting cocoanut roasted for dessert.

Not a tin had been opened; and save for the oil and vinegar in the salad, and some green spears of onion which Attwater cultivated and plucked with his own hand, not even the condiments were European.

Sherry, hock, and claret succeeded each other, and the Farallone champagne brought up the rear with the dessert.
It was plain that, like so many of the extremely religious in the days before teetotalism, Attwater had a dash of the epicure.

For such characters it is softening to eat well; doubly so to have designed and had prepared an excellent meal for others; and the manners of their host were agreeably mollified in consequence.
A cat of huge growth sat on his shoulders purring, and occasionally, with a deft paw, capturing a morsel in the air.