ANOTHER "CRAZY SUPPER."
By Editor
OUR readers will no doubt remember the comments that appeared in these columns last year concerning a "crazy supper" that was given by the ladies of the M. E. Church in Sullivan, Ill. We did not hear how the supper was conducted, but know that if it was according to the programme which we saw, it must have been a crazy affair. And now we have an account of another "crazy supper," which our readers will all agree was rightly named. It is from the Harper (Kansas) Daily Sentinel, of February 1:— "The ladies of the Methodist Church gave a crazy supper in the Forrey Block last evening; it was a grand and peculiar freak indeed, and was well attended by the people. Old ladies were dressed as young girls, and young ladies as quite old women, with spectacles. No one could help laughing when sitting down to the table; pickles were served on currycombs, sugar in butter-dishes; served meat in silver cake-baskets, coffee in vases; water was brought in in coal-buckets, and the old-fashioned wooden pail served for a coal-bucket; high-heeled suspenders and long-waisted umbrellas were served cold. "When a hungry denizen called for a stewed breast of a chicken, the waiter brought him pickled pigs' feet; an order for cake brought a fine slice of head cheese. A live rooster was chained to a dish in the middle of one of the tables, but there was not a man in the house brave enough to carve him; the pepper boxes were filled with flour, and the salt-cellars with sugar; oysters roasted, stuffed with cranberry sauce, was the grandest delicacy of the evening. It was a crazy supper indeed, and was something new in Harper. The ladies deserve great credit for the ingenuity displayed in getting it up. The receipts of the evening amounted to $41.50." Just think of it! The above nonsense, which would have been disgraceful if indulged in by children, was carried on by grown people, and in the name of Christ! Well might it be called "crazy," for lunatics from bedlam could not have acted with less sense. And the worst of it all is that those who do such things think that they are aiding the cause of Christ. That shows that a sense of sacred things must be well-nigh extinct among them. The friend who sent us the above item, also told of a church entertainment recently given in another town, in which the parable of the ten virgins was acted out, amid much applause, the minister, clothed in grand apparel, with a crown upon his head, representing the bridegroom, and ten young women covered with sheets, representing the virgins. When the five foolish virgins came back with oil in their lamps, and found the door shut, and were sent away by the bridegroom, there was great cheering. What may we expect next? We are glad to know that there are thousands of church-members who would scorn such worse than childish folly. There are thousands of non-professors who would not so caricature sacred things. But the fact that the members of an entire congregation can do such things and receive no rebuke from the church at large, exhibits a state of things that is deplorable in the extreme. What can such a church hope to do for the world?