I had
fashioned for me also a gavel in the shape of a sleeping seal, made of
fossil ivory from the Little Diomedes. The contrast of the weathered
brown of the outside of the ivory with the pure white of the inner
layers, when worked up into a carved design, gives the effect of cameo
and intaglio combined.
We tasted many new Eskimo dishes. When, on our return, we confessed that
the brain of the seal served here is a delicious dish, we ran against
the sensibilities of refined natures. But why is it cruder to enjoy
seal's brains _a la vinaigrette_, than to tickle our taste with brains
of the frolicking calf? The seal furnished a more equivocal dinner than
this, nothing less than entrails _au naturel_, which our hostess draws
through her fingers yard by yard in pure anticipative delight, each
guest being presented with two or three feet of the ribbon-like _piece
de resistance_. The scene that jumps to our memory as we watch this
feast of fat things is connected with food-manipulations in Chicago. It
was down at Armour's in the stockyards that we had seen Polacks and
Scandinavian girls preparing in the succulent sausage a comestible that
bore strange family semblance to that which our friends are now eating
before us, this linked sweetness long drawn out.
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