Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1882 — Something About Oysters. [ARTICLE]

Something About Oysters.

It must have been jolly living during the Crustaceous and Jurassic periods, when the length of oysters was measured by the foot. In those days it must have required a small pitchfork to eat oysters off the half-shell. It was then the succulent bivalve reached the culminating point in its existence. Had it retained its size, people now would sit down to a roast oyster as they sit down to a joint of beef or mutton. Signor Salvini would have found it impossible to stand up, as he did at the dinner given him before he last sailed for Europe and swallow an entire bivalve, of the largest size in the market, before an enthusiastic audience. Here is an interesting question for biologists: Did the people of Crustaceous and Jurassic periods eat oysters during the months without an r, or was it reserved for the people of this civilized age to yield to a hideous superstition which deprives us four months of the year of the most succulent product of the sea? A question of historical interest has also been raised of recent years. The minute researches of German historians have proved conclusively that on the eventful morning of the ides of March, when Julius Caesar left his house, he was instructed by Calphurnia to stop at an oyster sxloon on the Via Longa and order a “fry in a box” to be sent home to her, that he forgot to do so, and proceeded at once to the Capitol, where he was murdered, and that had he stopped to give the order, a messenger sent to warn him would have overtaken him.

But oysters, besides occupying the attention of grave historians, have inspired poets. Large bivalves were so abundant in New York, early in its history, that no one thought of buying them. This state of the market was enthusiastically versified as follows: “Crabs, lobsters, mussels, oysters, too, there be’ So large th: t one docs overbalance three Of those of Europe; and in quantity No one can reckon.” And not long afterward a colonist, in a poem entitled “New England Prospects,” mentions the oyster, along with the lobster and other salt water delicacies, in this manner: “The luscious lobster, with the crab-fish raw, The brinish oyster, mussel, perriwigge, And tortoise sought by the Indian squaw, Which to the flatts dance many a winter’s jiggc.” Others at the same period wrote of oysters of whose size and sweetness they make special mention. In 1671, Arnoldus Montanus speaks of oysters, “some a foot long, containing pearls, but few of brown color;” while Josselyn mentions some so large that they had to be cut into pieces before they could be eaten. “Some,” he says, “they roast and some tliQy dry as they do oysters, which are delicate breakfast meat so ordered; the oysters are long-shelled. I have had of them nine inches long from the joynt to the toe, containing an oyster like those the Latines called Tridacaun, that were to be cut into three pieces before they could put them into their mouths, very fat and sweet.” They must have been very abundant, too. “There is abundance of brave oysters at Amboy Point and several other places,” says one writer; and another speaks of “oysters, I think, would serve all England.” Another, in speaking of the advantages of Jiving in New York, claims “one thing more particular to us, which the others want also, which is vast oyster banks, which is the constant fresh victuals, during the winter, to English as well as Indians; of these there are many along our coasts, from the sea as high as against New York, whence they come to fetch them.”

Oysters have also formed a subject of legal enactments. Statutes have been passed for the protection of oystermen in their rights, and some States and towns have guarded jealously their oyster beds against citizens of neighboring States and towns. Among the recorded enactments of this kind is one enacted “att the general courtt held att Plymouth the fourth of June, 1661,” where is was determined “that five shillings shal bee payed to the Countrey upon every barrell of Oysters that is carryed out of the Gouv’ment, and that the Countrey be not defrauded, hee shall enter them with the Towne Clarke before hee carry them away, or else to forfeit twenty shillings per barrell carryed away not entered.”— Harper's Weekly. My friends, we can’t all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots and behave ourselves in a human and Christian manner. When we see a brother going down hill to ruin, let us not give him a push, but let us seize right hold of his coat-tails and draw him back to morality.— Artemus Ward. Talk about your outside kisses. Give us the kiss of the good housewife which is always preceded by a wipe of her mouth by the nice and virtuous kitchen apron. (Of course by this we don’t mean the kiss of any other felloe 's housewife.) Kentucky State Journal. An English physician says that a woman wh > has a great secret and dare not tell it can be made really ill by keeping it.