"It appears that in that city the public takes its steaks in capsules of concentrated beef."

The only way to explain the following August 28, 1899 old print article is that either people in Indianapolis were taking their dinner in pill form or editors at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle were taking their lunch in liquid form. More likely the latter. An excerpt:

“Capsule banquets? Well, hardly! The idea of sitting around a table in company, taking pills and bursting into song, quip and jest and eloquence over a pellet! What are the scientists trying to do? Drive all the gayety out of the world? Such is the horrible possibility disclosed by way they dine in Indianapolis. It appears that in that city the public takes its steaks in capsules of concentrated beef–little capsules no bigger than a quinine pill. All that the hotel keeper has to furnish with it is a glass of water and a crumb of salt. Then they take a little powder which used to be a potato and toss that down, and if a regular table d’hote dinner as required a compressed tomato for salad and a little thing that looks like a bean, but is really a whole mince pie, is swallowed, and after that a demitasse follows of about the size of a homeopathic pill.

This kind of thing may do for Indianapolis and other Western cities where people are so busy making money and politics that they would forget to eat if they did not have their dinners in their pockets and have alarm clocks that went off warningly at the time to take them. But we can say to Indianapolis right now that she need not look for any outside endorsements of her persnickety practices. When we eat we do so not merely to sustain life, but because, when the right sort of victuals are afforded, it is fun to eat. We like to eat in company and bandy remarks across the table and up and down the length of it, and we like to wash down every course with colored liquids that look as if they were drawn from the jars and bottles that druggists keep in their windows, but are different. We are especially anxious as to those liquids. If in an emergency we consented to take our steaks in pellets and eat our soup dry in one tiny mouthful, are we supposed to take champagne and other mineral waters in a mustard spoon? Shall we quaff out Chateau Yquem and our Pontet Canet in single drops that would get lost between our tongue tips and our throats?

Why, the mere anxiety of keeping track of the potables in a dinner like that would offset all the possible pleasure to be had out of the banquet. Suppose a waiter were accidentally to stuff a couple of cases of Chablis into his vest pocket while he was gathering a service of fried chicken out of a pill box, and spill all the wine! Where would he then be and where would be the dinner? No sirs. We prefer to believe that stomachs were given to us in order to do work, and we do not thank the scientists who are trying to persuade us that all of our waking hours should be diverted from dinner and refreshments and devoted to labor and Lofty Thought. If this is all that science intends to do for us, down with science! Meantime, let us keep putting down pudding and cocktails and a lot of other joys.”

"He proposed that the ceremony be performed by phonograph."

The record player was initially a disappointing technology, but one nineteenth-century Brooklyn undertaker found use for it during an unusual funeral. An excerpt about the odd ceremony from an August 18, 1895 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Undertaker Stillwell of Gravesend has at last achieved his desire and held a funeral with the services conducted by a phonograph. In spite of its novelty there was nothing indecorous about the circumstances and in fact the mourners were visibly affected.

Augusta Burr, a baby of 16 months, who had been posing in a Coney Island museum as a freak, she being the size of a child of 5, and weighing ninety-three pounds, was in perfect health until Monday. She began to suffer from her teeth and then pneumonia set in. Thursday she died.

Mr. Stillwell was given charge of the funeral. As the relatives were non-residents, they desired a modest and speedy funeral, and being poor they wanted it to be cheaply conducted.

This was agreed to, and Mr. Stillwell had the body of the infant taken to his undertaking establishment, on the Neck Road, in the town of Gravesend, Saturday afternoon, when the mother and sister met with others to accompany the body to the Gravesend cemetery, where it was to be interred. The mother expressed a wish that a clergyman might be secured to conduct  a burial service over the body of the baby. There was no clergyman to be got handily, and Mr. Stillwell so told her. Her grief at this statement affected him, and then he proposed that the ceremony be performed by phonograph. The mother immediately agreed to it.

Mr. Stillwell is an expert in the management of the phonograph, and placed the records already made in their proper order, as the weeping relatives and friends gathered around the coffin containing the remains of their dear one.

First the Lord’s Prayer was rendered with a solemn emphasis that took away all the suggestion of mechanical effect. It impressed the mourners. Then a record by the Mozart quartet of the hymn, ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ was given on another cup and after that the verses of the Scripture usually given at funerals and beginning with the words, ‘Man, who is born of woman,’ etc., were rendered with full emphasis. Then a solo, ‘The Sweet Bye and Bye,’ recorded by Miss Loreen Williamson of Gravesend was repeated. The closing portion was the committal service used by the Reformed Church denomination. The remains were then conveyed to the town cemetery, where they were interred without further ceremonies.

Mr. Stillwell, when spoken to on the matter last night, said he was entirely satisfied with the result. He said:

‘It was a solemn, if a novel scene. I confess I felt a degree of trepidation when the service began, but when the inanimate machine, with its whirring accompaniment, began the solemn words, they seemed invested with a feeling of comfort, and touched everyone present.'”