Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1881 — Pie. [ARTICLE]

Pie.

A young man, whom we will call Dudley Ashton, went out to the North Park to write up the mines, and otherwise to whoop up the country and make it blossom as the rose. After he had been there some time he thought that the miners didn’t live high enough. He had been accustomed to luxury and pie, so he said ho would show the boys how to make pie. Every one was glad that a professional pie-promoter had struck the camp, and there was a general good feeling all around. So Dudley took off his coat and took a chew of tobacco, and laid the foundations for six fire-proof pies. He made some plaster of-Paris dough with amalgam filling, and proceeded to put in the “works.” He got some canned blackberries that were on Jack Creek when the Indians invaded the camp years ago, and that were so hard even then that the Utes would not touch them. These he kiln-dried and laid in the pie, holding them in place with tenpenny nails, and trimmed with overskirt of the same. After that he was ready to put on the sheet-iron roof. This he did, fastening it down with wroughtiron rivets. Then he got an engraver to put his monogram on the top, and put the whole six pies in the retort of the assayer’s furnace. The following week the pies wore taken out, still at a white heat They were gradually cooled, and after the mid-day meal of bacon and coffee, every man put his napkin under his chin and smacked his lips, while Dudley took a pie out to the blacksmith shop to divide it up for dessert. Only one man ate any pie that day. He was the man above whose lowly tomb the blue-eyed poison weed is waving, and where in the quiet midnight, the soft-voiced coyote coos a mellow requiem. The boys in the Park feared that they would have to kill a man in order to start a cemetery, but when that pie penetrated the system of its victim, death entered the new metropolis, and on the plain white slab, erected over the new-made grave, they simply wrote : Turn, sinners, turn ; why will ye die From eating cold, cast-iron pie ? Laramie City Boomerang.