Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A very brilliant entertainment has lately come off in Paris, at the Grand Hotel, on which occasion the meat supplied to the guests consisted principally of horse-flesh served in various styles. There was nearly a hundred persons present, including many distinguished ladies. Several English noblemen, as well as titled Frenchmen, professors and savants sat down, forming a company rarely exceeded in respectability. The President of the Republic was represented by one of his household officers, the Count de Gamay, and several well-known Americans were to be seen also at the repast. Altogether the horse-flesh banquet was a great success, if we may believe the Parisian newspapers.
The bill-of-fare was a lengthy one, and comprised dishes of horse, mule, and ass, in every variety of culinary production, and which were freely and agreeably partaken of by all present. Speeches were delivered in French and English, and toasts were drunk to M. Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, who was one of the first to advocate hippophagy, and to M. Decroix, who has done so much to further the use of horse-flesh. It appears that there are no less than twenty butcher shops now open in the city of Paris for the exclusive sale of the flesh of horses, mules and asses. The police regulations, with a view to protect the public from deception, do not allow these butchers to sell beef and mutton; and, on the other hand, the ordinary butchers must not sell horse-flesh. The trade is thus legalized and perfectly legitimate, large and increasing demand being manifested for the article in the several sections of the great metropolis. Nor are the humbler classes alone the purchasers.
The consumption of horse-flesh is now so considerable as an article of food that the carcass of a horse, after one of those accidents so often happening in the thoroughfares of the city, fetches 120 francs, instead of the price formerly paid by the knackers, 15 francs. Good cooking pieces are sold at about one-quarter the price of beef or mutton. The prejudice against eating horses has greatly diminished in Paris since the siege taught the inhabitants to consider the flesh of this animal a luxury. In many of the hospitals sisters of charity gave the patients horse-flesh, and only told them what it was when it was found that they liked it. We do not hesitate to admit our preference, however, for stall-fed beef.