by this and all other bakeries of the country during a twelve-month!
Nevertheless, these facilities would be inadequate to popular demand
were the majority of our countrymen of a stomach as unbounded as
that of the Dundee laborer whom a Scotch journal commemorates. This
extraordinary person, having not long since eaten nine large twopenny
pies at a Dundee pie-shop within fourteen and a half minutes,
announced his purpose to eat on the following Monday twelve pies
within twenty-five minutes; and in fact, when the delicacies were put
before him in the shape of a six-pound pile, fourteen inches high, he
consumed half a dozen in five minutes, the next three at the end of
eleven minutes, and the last three in six minutes more, having ended
his repast eight minutes sooner than he had designed--possibly owing
to the pangs of hunger, since he expressed a willingness to occupy the
spare moments with devouring another half dozen pies.

With this item of news in fresh remembrance we chanced to read in a
very old English newspaper the supper eaten, many years ago, by Mr.
Oakley of Stanton, Derbyshire--a repast which makes the Scotchman's,
just recorded, rather frugal by comparison. His first dish, says the
report, was two quarts of milk, thirty eggs, half a pound of butter,
half a pound of sugar, three penny loaves, a quantity of ginger and
nutmeg and an ounce of mustard, all boiled together; his second course
was "apiece of cheese and a pound of bread to it;" the third was half
a pound of bacon, a penny loaf and a quart of ale, followed by three
halfpennies' worth of ginger-bread and a pint of ale; his fourth dish
was a custard of two pounds, an ounce of mustard, some black pepper,
a pint of milk and three pints of ale to it. 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 m