The Monticellonian

THE SAUCE WAS LOADED
After Eating the English Plum Pudding the Family Had Queer Feelings.

"Somebody across the water sent my wife an English plum pudding in a heavy pasteboard box, together with the recipe for the proper sauce to go with it," said a Cleveland man the other day. "It didn't reach us until the day before New Year's day, and so we celebrated the advent of 1902 by having the pudding for dinner. Luckily the two or three people my wife invited to sample our treasure couldn't come, so we had it all to ourselves.

Well, when the time came it was brought in with a sprinkling of brandy blazing on top, and it certainly looked attractive. We were liberally helped and the sauce was passed around and poured out in generous quantities. It was a peculiar sauce, heavy and thick. Later on we found it exhilarating.

"After dinner we had intended playing a social game of pedro, but instead of doing so we sat around and vacantly stared at each other and yawned and rubbed our heads and occasionally made stupid replies to stupid questions. We all went to bed good and early, and I declare I never found the stairs so long or so hard to climb. And, do you know, I can't remember that I ever heard my wife hiccough before.

"Well, the next morning," said the narrator, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "I asked her what in the world there was about the plum pudding that should make us feel as if we had been out all night with the boys. And then she got the recipe for that pudding sauce and I copied it down. Here it is, spelling and all: 'Three wineglasses of brandy, two of madeira, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and a pint of melted butter.'

"'Jane,' I said to my wife, 'it's a little late, perhaps, but let's solemnly swear off on English plum pudding sauce forever.' And we did."

A man is often lucky when he fails to get what he wants. - Chicago Daily News.