Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — Grasshoppers on Toast. [ARTICLE]

Grasshoppers on Toast.

"Ever cat any grasshopper?” asked John Mills, at the Paciflo Hotel in Pomona, Cal., the other day, while con* versing with a reporter of the Progress. “ You never did? Then you don’t know what luxury is. Talk about your fricaseed frogs, pate de foie gras, and all the rest of your hifalutln’ French flxin’s! They just ain’t in it at all with a big, fat Kansas hopper, done brown in fresh country butter. I was onoe traveling from Bt. Joe to Wichita when the hqppers swooped down on Kansas like a horde of hungry office-holders on a Pres-ident-elect. When they finished feeding and hopped up on the barbed-wire fence to pick their teeth and talk it over, the country looked like the burned distriot in Chicago after the big fire. I had a new green wagon with red wheels, and the hoppers ate every bit of paint off it and gnawed the woodwork. They ate all the blacking off my harness, the tails off my horses, and I had to keep my dog under a tarpaulin to prevent them devouring him raw. You never sow such appetites. They got into my commissary department and made away with everything but a stone jar of butter I bad bought in St. Joe. I didn’t have a oent, and It was two days’ drive to Wichita. Couldn't live on butter, you know, so I concluded to play for even. I built a fire, put my skillet over it and dropped in half a half a pound of the dyspepsia provoker. It was a- on frying and sizzling away at a great rate, and the hoppers were hopping into it, sixty a second. I let ’em fry about a minute, then I removed ’em and sat down to give my stomach a surprise party. Well, sir, the hind legs were the finest meat I ever ate. They had an excellent game flavor and tasted like mountain brook trout. I fared sumptuously a ter thut, and found the journey far too short. I had always been sorry for St John, whose diet had been locusts and wild honey, but I tell you he knew his business. If a locust i» anything like a Kansas hopper the original pathfinder had no kick coming.” For cleaning silver the best thing is plaster of paris moistened with water and rubbed on the metal with a cloth. Before it is dry take a piece of soft flannel and some of the dry powder and polish off. This treatment will remove stains and m-ike the silver look like new. It will inaka tin look like silver.