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Show EEL-EATINGCONTESl Linear Measurements, Not Pounds, Count at Finish. Winner, Five Feet Ten Inches Irt Height, Consumes Six Feet Ten Inches of Smoking Fish All the Waistlines Alike. New York. Pie eating matches are more or less familiar. Eel eating contests con-tests are much less so, for the simple reason that while commonly the p'e eating is done In public and for a wager the eel eating is privately done and for fun, though the loser may be required to pay for all the eels eaten. There Is a little club composed of half a dozen substantial men, all lovers lov-ers of sea food, that owns a comfortable comfort-able bungalow In a pleasant spot on the Long Island shore, in which Its members meet occasionally to eat a sea food dinner. They do their own cooking and they are all good cooks, with one or another of them notably able in some specialty. One Is particularly partic-ularly good on chowder, others on fish and still others on eels. ThlB club assembled in the bungalow lately for an eel dinner and Incidentally for an eel eating contest Among fishermen acquainted with the eel in every aspect and among eel lovers generally he Is considered as a qualified eel eater who can eat his own length in eels. But of course no man could eat his own length of big eels; the eels for such a test must not be more than half an inch in diameter, di-ameter, which is the standard size for eels to be eaten in eel eating contests. con-tests. Such is also the size eel that eel lovers find most agreeable to the taste. For this particular occasion the club commissioned an &el fisherman to gather eels in sufficient quantity and also those that should fill the requirements, require-ments, being not more than halt an inch in diameter and of uniform size. It took the fisherman three days to do this, though of course in that time he gathered also many larger eels which he could market. The eels for the club he selected by sifting his catch through a sieve with a half-inch ' mesh. The club's cooking equipment includes in-cludes two big frying pans 18 inches in diameter. Two members sat down, before the fire with these big frying pans and fried eels, which were kept hot in an over, and when the eels were all ready the club began to eat. In pie eating and some other similar contestn there is usually set a time limit, the winner being the man who eats the greatest number of pies in a given time; but there is no time limit here. The members eat leisurely, leisure-ly, for enjoyment, and then when all have finished the measurer measures up the bones which each man has preserved by himself at the table. One lot after another each man's eel bones are stretched out on the table, with the sections set end to end and snugly together, and then the measure meas-ure of the string Is taken. On this occasion all the men had eaten more than their length of eels with one exception. This member, who stands five feet ten inches in height, had eaten of eels but five feet nine. Probably he could easily have eaten a section or two more and so ' have exceeded the recognized standard limit if he had only taken the trouble to keep a little closer mental note of his stacked up bones. But there were other members who had exceeded the standard by consid. erable, including one man of the same height as the loser, namely, five feet ten, who had eaten six feet ten inches of eels, or one foot more than his own length.' This probably constitutes the eel eating record. |