Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1881 — Corn Pone and “Haown Pups.” [ARTICLE]

Corn Pone and “Haown Pups.”

Just after the close of the rebellion, I was employed as traveler by a film in Leavenworth, having all of the State of Kansas for my canvassing grounds. I traveled in a large, covered spring wagon, with five trunks of samples. Late one afternoon, in the autumn of ’66, as I was jobbing over the prairie down toward Fort Scott, I fell in with a young man on horseback, going in the same direction. Wo exchanged salutations, time of day, etc. He was a' nobby fowl, lavender tie, kid gloves, low-necked shoes, plaid suit, a genuine la-de-dfther. Seeing he was a stranger, I asked his biz, where from, whereat, and all that. He was from “Besting, by thundah,” introducing a new spool thread, “The strawngest thread ye ever saw, by thundah.” We shipped for the night at the ranch, kept by an old woman in Israel, from Missouri, who dished up everything in the most primitive manner. There was bacon, potatoes, hominy, corn pone, etc. Accustomed to such fare, I pitched in with a wolf’s appetite, after my day’s hard ride, but noticed when I had got the wire edge off, that the Boston acquain-• tance was not going for his grub with that energy which would indicate “great goneness ” in the region of the stomach. He picked up a bit of corn pone, brokfl* it apart, gazed at it attentively, pulled some short brown things out of it, laid them beside his plate, tried a bit of the bacon and potatoes, then another bit of the pone with more examination, and more short brawn things pulled out and laid aside. Finally, the landlady, seeing all was not right with him, came round to his side of the table, lowered her spec’s from forehead to nose, inspected the small mound of short brown hair beside his plate, and in a very high, squeaky, falsetto voice, exclaimed: “ Wai! I swaw I ower boys hev got a great notion of raisin’ haown pups, an’ to save my soul, I can’t keep them dawgs from sleepin’ in the meal barl.” There was no farther call for corn pone at that meal from any of us, and my new friend remarked that he “nevah knew anything like it in Besting, by thundah.”—J. 11. P. in Indianapolis Herald.