The Wichita Daily Eagle

Settling a Restaurant Bill.

A bluegrass idyl has been circulating through the Southern society for several days. It is a tale of two Kentuckians- one a major, the other a colonel-who determined to gratify an oft expressed desire to visit New York. They came, and after two days of sightseeing the colonel suggested to the major that a trip to New York would not be complete without a dinner at Delmonico's. The major agreed.

It was deemed that it would hardly be considerate to take Mr. Delmonico unawares, and in order to prepare him for so unusual an event as a swell dinner for two the Kentucky gentlemen went to the restaurant early in the day, called for the head waiter and told him what they wanted. "Spare no expense," they said.

They dined at 6. It was a splendid dinner. They called for their bill. The waiter placed a check, face down, on the menu. The gentlemen were toasting each other as the waiter did this, and when they placed their glasses on the table he was gone. They saw what appeared to them to be a scrap of paper on the menu and brushed it off. The old fellows were ignorant of the customs of French restaurants, and they concluded that the menu must be the bill. The colonel began to figure up the prices. It seemed that they had eaten a great deal, but the names of the dishes were in a language unknown to them, and anyway they were not in a mood to bother about trifles.

But the colonel gasped when he figured up the total. It was $960.

"Great heavens, sah!" he exclaimed to the major. "It is $960. If we pay this we can't get back home."

"We might," suggested the major faintly, "we might jump out of this window and run."

"No, sah," said the colonel, bringing his fist down on the table. "We are Kentucky gentlemen, sah. We will pay this bill, sah, and then, sah, we will shoot the landlord, sah." -New York Times.