Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1885 — How “Chestnuts" Originated. [ARTICLE]

How “Chestnuts" Originated.

In one of the French prisons, immediately under the supervision of the perfecture of police, it is, or was until recent years, a custom for the night watchman to drop every half hour a chestnut into a receptacle, which thus became a record of duty done or neglected. It followed that a missing chestnut became the subject of anxious explanation, which was generally a falsehood, and like all falsehoods, stupid. There was naturally a sameness in the explanations offered by the sleepy guard for the absence of his half-hourly chestnut. These stories became known as chestnuts. It befell that any dull story not worth repeating was called a chestnut, as resembling tbe chestnut explanations, for stupidity and lack of cleverness of invention. This is the true and simple story of the origin of the chestnut expression.—•, Memphis Avalanche.