The friend who calls up over the telephone.
The horse that has been especially wired from Pimlico.
The letting in of the friends in the office.
The search for ready money.
The studying of the entries.
The mysterious absence from the office.
The time of suspense and waiting.
The feeling of excitement among the friends in the office.
The trip outside to buy a sporting extra.
The search for the results.
The sad return upstairs.
The hope that the paper may have made a mistake.
The feeling among the friends in the office that the paper is right.
The attitude of the friends in the office.
The feeling of remorse.
The lightened pay envelope.
Wild Gastronomic Adventures of a Gourmet
The Toronto Star Weekly
November 24, 1923
Last night we were cooking venison.
As the meat sizzled in the pan it brought back adventures in eating. Wild gastronomic adventures.
In order that this may be a full confession, the author writes under a pseudonym. But it is all true. Every word of it is true.
I have eaten Chinese sea slugs, muskrat, porcupine, beaver tail, birds’ nests, octopus and horse meat.
I have also eaten snails, eels, sparrows, caviar and spaghetti. All shapes.
In addition I have at one time and another eaten Chinese river shrimps, bamboo sprouts, hundred-year-old eggs, and lunchcounter doughnuts.
Finally I must confess to having eaten mule meat, bear meat, moose meat, frogs legs and fritto misto.
It is better to keep foreign names out of this. They will only complicate it.
Once upon a time I lived for almost three weeks on goat’s milk. That was when my face was yellow as a Chinaman’s with mountain jaundice and they used to drive the goats up to the door of the hospital. I will never willingly take another drink of goat’s milk.
Of the other delicacies named above, the most toothsome are bamboo sprouts and beaver tail. Unfortunately, due to climatic exigencies, it is almost impossible to combine them in the same dish.
The least to be commended is mule meat. There is very little one can say for mule meat. It makes little appeal to either the esthetic sense or the palate. In ranking foods it should be placed somewhere between boiled moccasin and the more toothsome of the tallow candles.
That is unless it is a young mule. I have never eaten young mule. It may be very good.
Before the confessional is over I must admit that I have frequently eaten goat. Young goat, that is. It is a delicacy in Italy and the skinned young goats hang in the marketplaces like rabbits. Stewed it is very good.
My real gastronomic adventures began at the age of ten. A number of us kids had a shack in a run-down cherry orchard back of our house. We were all mighty hunters. We all pulled pretty deadly slingshots.
We read Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages and decided that the only proper thing to do was to eat whatever game you killed.
This ideal proved a boon to the cats of the neighborhood. If a cat has nine lives, that ruling must have saved hundreds of lives. It brought me, however, into contact with sparrows as game birds.
The sparrow may not be as strong a flyer as the quail. Fewer sportsmen shoot him than pursue the partridge. He will never rank with the wild turkey. But he is a mighty fine bird to eat. Try it some time and see.
It was about this time in my gastronomic career that I was led into what I can now look back on as a gastronomic excess. On a bet I ate a fair-sized quantity of poison ivy.
My father is immune to the effects of poison ivy. He is also, by the way, immune to mosquitos. I boasted of the fact to a collection of the gang that poison ivy would not harm my old man. They doubted me.
I therefore declared that poison ivy wouldn’t hurt me either. Some doubt as to this was expressed.
I thereupon offered to eat some poison ivy to prove my point. A good deal of doubt of my actual willingness to eat any poison ivy was freely expressed.
A wager involving, I think, ten thousand dollars was made that I would not eat the ivy. I thereupon ate the ivy.
It did not harm me in the least. I never collected the wager. But I acquired a certain social standing among the other boys by my ability and willingness to eat poison ivy at any time to silence scoffers or win bets.
I do not know whether I still have the ability to eat poison ivy. It has not been tested for many years.
Chinese sea slugs I first ate in Kansas City. During a winter spent as police reporter on the Kansas City Star, I continued my epicurean education by eating steadily through the menu of a Chinese restaurant. Not one of these short-order Canadianized Chinese restaurants, but a real chop suey, chow mein place with teakwood tables and a fan-tan game going in the back room.
At this time I had discovered chow mein which, when properly made, has much the same game edge on any occidental dish you can name as Mr. Dempsey has on Mr. P. Villa.
Somehow I felt that chow mein couldn’t be the only Chinese dish. Somewhere in that un-understandable menu there doubtless was listed a dish that would make chow mein look like chow mein made everything else in the world look to me.
So I determined to eat my way completely through the menu. It was a large menu of almost seven pages. It took me all winter. But I made some wonderful discoveries.
No one has to tell me how Dr. Banting felt when he discovered insulin. I have known the thrill of scientific gastronomic research.
There were several drawbacks though. In the first place I could get no one to eat with me after the first few weeks. Then there were sea slugs. I encountered nearly half a page of sea slugs. Sea slugs in every known form. They nearly stopped me. Even now the word sea slug, or its Chinese equivalent, makes me shudder.
Just after sea slugs on the menu came ancient eggs. One-hundred-year-old eggs. Dark green in color. If you want instruction as well as amusement from this article, let me give you a straight tip. Lay off ancient eggs. They aren’t worth it.
In the first place they are very expensive. In the second place they don’t taste good.
I was constantly in debt to various police sergeants, pugilists and wrestling promoters that winter. It cost a lot of money to keep to my eating program. Finally the Chinese restaurant keeper got enthusiastic over my eating. He laid himself out. He did his best. But he never extended me credit. I think he was afraid I might die on him.
For years I used to get a postcard from that Chinese restaurant keeper every Christmas.
Kansas City was a great eating town. In those days the favorite newspapermen’s eating house was just up Grand Avenue from the Star plant. One night at midnight three of us went in and sat at the counter.
One reporter ordered milk toast. This order sounded like an insult to the waiter, who had been celebrating the successful ending of the week, and he made a pass at the reporter with a large knife he had been using to slice ham.
The reporter swung at the knife wielder and fortunately connected. The knife wielder took a dive through the plate-glass cigar case. As the other waiters refused to regard the incident as closed we were forced to eat at the all-night lunch wagons.
Kansas City was a live town in those days, and the glory of its nocturnal life was the all-night lunch wagon. Many a night I have stood in the shelter of an all-night lunch wagon while the blizzard swept down from the great cold funnel of the Missouri River valley and eaten chili con carne, brown, red and hot all the way down, and real chilmaha frijoles while I learned about life and Mexican home cooking from the keeper of the wagon. To be invited inside an all-night lunch wagon was a great honor only accorded to the elect. The owners were all wonderful cooks, too.
It was the cook and conductor of an all-night lunch wagon that first loaned me a copy of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.
The worst f
ood I have ever eaten over a period of three days was in Kingston, Ont. On the third day I had time to locate a good Chinese restaurant where they could cook Chinese food. But they used too much bean oil.
There is a good Chinese restaurant in Cobalt, Ont. Everybody that has ever been there knows the one I mean.
Toronto restaurants I have found uniformly dull. The food is there and it is cooked, and that is about all you can say. On the other hand there is excellent food and good cooking in many of the Toronto hotels. Especially on Sunday.
Toronto has good cafeterias. The variation in prices in different cafeterias is amazing. In one it will be impossible to get any sort of a meal under 75¢ or 85¢. The same meal, exactly as well cooked in a cafeteria exactly as centrally located, will cost 40¢ or 45¢.
You can have adventures in eating in Toronto. But you have to go into the Ward to get them.
Snails I first ate in Dijon, France. Somehow I had never hankered after snails ever since the morning I saw a hawker pushing a wheelbarrow-load of them through the narrow streets of the Montagne Ste. Geneviève quarter shouting “Escargots! Escargots!” at the top of his lungs and pausing to chase the little fellows that wriggled off out of the gutter.
There was something about that live mass in the wheelbarrow. A snail in every shell and two horns on every snail. Somehow it didn’t stimulate the appetite.
But in Dijon you are no man if you don’t eat escargots. So I ate them. I don’t know that I’m any more of a man now. But I know what snails taste like.
The thing they remind you most of is an inner tube. Cross an inner tube with a live frog, and make the product slippery, and you have the texture. There are few snails sold now though. For the past years there has been a small famine. Seventy percent of the snails exported from Burgundy have been made of beef, cut snail-shape, cooked and packed in the snail shells. There is no lack of snail shells.
Frog legs are no exotic dish. Most people have eaten frog legs. They taste like the white meat of chicken except the meat is more tender and delicately flavored.
There are two common animals that taste like very good young pork. One is the opossum or just plain possum, who trims coat collars, eats persimmons, and was beloved of ex-President Taft, of reciprocity memory.
The other is the common porcupine or quill pig.
Porky will eat anything from a canoe paddle to a barrel of salt pork, barrel and all, but his meat is nearly as tender and delicious as the possum’s. He looks hard to skin, but by nailing his carcass up to a tree by the front paws he is very easy to work with.
I have had some very fine meals of porcupine in the bush.
Muskrats are good eating, too, as any Indian can tell you. The meat is as tender as chicken. In preparing both muskrat and porcupine, when skinning them you must cut out the little kernels of scent glands which lie along the inside of the forelegs.
Beaver tail is another strictly Canadian delicacy. It is becoming increasingly hard to obtain. I have eaten it once. Then it was prepared by a very fine cook and struck me as about the best thing I’d ever sunk a tooth into.
Deer liver fried with back bacon is another wonderful article of food that Canadians have a better chance at than anyone else. You have never had the real venison flavor until you eat fresh deer liver fried over a wood fire with good back bacon crisping in the pan with it.
Octopus is a great article on the menu of all the seaports of the Mediterranean. The tentacles are cut into manageable lengths, breaded and fried in butter. It varies in appeal. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it is very tough and leathery.
When I first ate it on a waterfront restaurant in Geneva, I was not aware it was octopus. That always makes a difference. About halfway through the dish I noticed the little vacuum cups on a piece that had lost its batter. It was a shock. But then the adventurer in eating gets used to shocks.
There was horse meat for example. For weeks I ate horse meat before I discovered it. It is not bad eating. Except artillery horses and steeple-chasers. The meat is like beef, but stringy.
Opposite where I lived in Paris there was a “Boucherie Chevaline” with a big golden horse’s head above the door and a sign that announced that the proprietor was prepared to proceed to the place and elevate horses, mules or donkeys at any hour of the day or night. Except for the golden horse’s head outside it looked like any other butcher shop. All the usual cuts of meat were on display. It did a good day-in-and-day-out business among the housewives of the quarter.
After years of adventurous eating there are only a few things that I dislike. One of them is parsnips. Another is the doughnut. Another is Yorkshire pudding. Another is boiled potatoes.
There are articles of food, like the sweet potato, that I can no longer eat because I once made a pig of myself about them. There are other things, like spaghetti, that I cannot eat so well now that my hand is losing its cunning.
But I have discovered that there is romance in food when romance has disappeared from everywhere else. And as long as my digestion holds out I will follow romance.
The Big Dance on the Hill
The Toronto Star Weekly
November 24, 1923
The arrival.
The vast crowd on the floor.
The encounter with the boss.
The man-to-man smile from the boss.
The feeling of elation.
The doorkeeper from the office who is serving out.
The whisper from the doorkeeper.
The long journey down the hall.
The closed door.
The clink of glasses.
The opening of the door.
The imposing array of glassware.
The sight of the host.
The look on the host’s face.
The sight of the boss with the host.
The look on the boss’ face.
The sight of several other distinguished-looking men.
The look on the distinguished-looking men’s faces.
The atmosphere of disapproval.
The request from the attendant.
The giving of the order.
The silence kept by the host, the boss and the distinguished-looking men.
The uncomfortable feeling.
The increase of the uncomfortable feeling.
The retreat.
The journey down the long hallway.
The chuckles from the doorkeeper.
The statement from the doorkeeper that he had been instructed to admit only the family and old friends.
The renewed chuckles of the doorkeeper.
The desire to kill the doorkeeper.
The sad return to the dance floor.
Wolfe’s Diaries
The Toronto Star Weekly
November 24, 1923
Three years ago it looked as if the faded brown pages of General Wolfe’s own diaries covered with his clear copper-plating penmanship and tracing the events of one of Canada’s times of greatest crisis had been lost to the Dominion. It was an inestimable historic loss.
Included in the historic collection of Monckton papers, the diaries were offered for auction sale in London. Ottawa had set aside a sum for the purchase. But Sir Leicester Harmsworth, the late Lord Northcliffe’s brother, outbid the Dominion government.
Now Sir Leicester has presented the entire collection of books and documents to Canada as a memorial to Lord Northcliffe, and in a short time they should arrive at Ottawa.
The collection is called the Monckton Papers. But it is General Wolfe’s own documents, papers and his personal order book covering a period of eleven years, between the time when he was a major in the 12th of Foot to the eve of his death in the attack on the Heights, that are the greatest in popular interest.
Wolfe’s order-book is a revelation of both the man and the soldier. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the protection of artillery fire will relish this passage:
Officers of artillery and detachments of gunners are put on board the armed sloops to regula
te the fire, that in the hurry our own troops may not be hurt by our artillery. Captn. York and the officers will be particularly careful to distinguish the enemy, and to point their fire against them. The frigates will not fire until broad daylight, so that no mistake can be made.
A new light upon Wolfe’s own opinion of the battle that was to give him his death wound is shown by this extract.
…The rest march on and endeavor to bring the French and Canadians to battle.
The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions mingled with a disorderly peasantry.
Then to conclude the order, written in the same copper-engraving script:
The soldiers must be attentive to their officers and resolute in the execution of their duty.
It was the last order Wolfe ever wrote.
A new side to Wolfe, the admirer of Gray’s “Elegy,” is given in his orders where he declares that he must have young and vigorous officers to lead the troops in “the never-ceasing war that should be made upon the Indians till they are totally exterminated or driven to a distance. Young officers armed and dressed for the service of the woods would spread terror among them and soon root ‘em out.”
Sir Leicester has had the entire collection bound in polished morocco embossed in gold. Some of the important documents are set out in die-sunk pages with wide margins in order to eliminate friction.
Included in the collection is a series of thirty-three letters written by General Wolfe during the siege of Quebec. Many points about the siege are cleared up by these letters.
Journals of French officers, letters addressed to the French commander, and diaries and maps of the French positions are also numbered in the collection of documents relating to the siege.
The Monckton manuscripts themselves deal with the period from 1752, when Lieut.-Col. Monckton arrived in Nova Scotia until after Monckton assumed the command on the death of Wolfe. They give in detail the story of the siege and capture of old Quebec and reveal all the secret orders of the expedition.
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