Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — Love Among the Cacti. [ARTICLE]

Love Among the Cacti.

The Pitalla is the only variety of cactus, so far as we know, that produces fruit that can be eaten without the man who does the eating being sorry for it afterwards. The fruit of the Pitalla is quite small, not much larger than a man’s thumb, and it has almost the identical flavor of strawberries. The berries have to be eaten with great care, as the small thorns are apt to stick in the lips. There is a very romantic story connected with the Pitalla, a wild, weird legend, in which undying love, Pitallas, and a cow-boy are mixed up. Some years, ago, the mother of a fair, wild prairie flower, happened to look out in the direction of the cowpen, which nestled cosily up to a Pitalla bush, when her motherly eyes perceived the wild prairie flower and a freckled-faced cowboy, the son of a neighbor, flattening their noses on each other’s faces with a pressure of 3,000 pounds to the square inch. As the families of “the lovyers” were not on borrowing terms, the mother of the prairie flower lifted up her voice, as Jacob did, but instead of weeping, - as Jacob did, she warbled forth:

“Mirandy Jane! O, Mirandy Jane! O, you Mirandy Jane! Come right up here to the house. O, Jane! you, Jane! O, you Mirandy Jane! come right up here, I say.” She came. He, the coy and gentle cow-boy, slid out of sight behind a Pitalla bush. “Didn’t I tell you to have nothin’ ter do v ith that low-down, brandy-legged, slab-sided, maverick-stealing Jake Mullins, and I seed yer a-kissin’ him and akissin’ him.” “Indeed, mother, you err. You do Mr. Mullins a gross injustice. He is too much of a gentleman, too noble, too pure.” “Shet your gab, or I’ll wear you to a frazzle agin a tree, Mirandy Jane. Did’nt I see Jake with th big catfish mouth of his smack up agin yourn, say ?” “No, mothmk he did not smack'me. You do Jake injustice. He is too noble, too pure—” “ What did he have that big mouth of his up agin your fool mouth for, if he wasn’t a-kissen you." “He was extracting the spines-of the Pitalla from my lips. I had been partaking of some pitallas, and I bad got some of the spines in my lips, so I requested Mr. Mullins to extract them, and he had to do it with his teeth. You see, mother, how unfounded your suspicions were.” The door of the little cabin was suddenly closed, and the stillness of the forest was pierced by a succession of shrieks, annotated with loud thwacks at regular intervals, justifying the conclusion that the old lady had got the prairie flower across a trunk, and was taking advantage of the situation with a board.— Texas Siftings.