The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 384, August 8, 1829 · Chapter 3SPIRIT OF THE Public Journals
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The first operation on the grown plants is that of topping; this is the planter's hay harvest; the tops serve for chaff, for dry food instead of hay, for fodder. They are cut off above the ears, collected by a cart going along the intervals or roads, and stacked for winter use. Mr. Cobbett's harvest of tops was not so successful as it might have been: this arose from his absence at the favourable opportunity for stacking.
The ears of corn are stripped off when the grain is hard, and carried in carts to the barns, and placed in corn cribs adapted for the purpose. The grains are taken off the pithy cylinder on which they grow, by being rubbed or scraped on a piece of iron: in America a bayonet (a weapon called by the Yankees Uncle George's toasting fork) is invariably used for the purpose: the cylinder, now bared of its grain, is called the cobb. The delicate leaves by which the ear is enveloped is, as has been mentioned, called the husk; it may be used for the stuffing of beds: Mr. Cobbett has converted some of it even into paper.
In Mr. Cobbett's sanguine temperament the uses to which the grain is applicable are wonderfully numerous and important. Under the heads of pig-feeding, sheep-feeding, and cow-feeding, poultry-feeding, and horse-feeding, he gives an account of his own experiments and observations. Of the thriving condition of the American horses Cobbett gives an example in his amusing vein, and by a trial made at his own farm in Long Island, he proved that neither their strength nor speed deteriorates on corn.
The branch of man-feeding is, of course, an important department of the subject. The forms in which it is made palatable and nutritious are numerous, and appear under names of American origin that will sound strange in the English ear. Before the corn is ripe it is frequently roasted in the state of green ears. "When the whole of the grains are brown, you lay them in a dish and put them upon the table; they are so many little bags of roasted milk, the sweetest that can be imagined, or, rather, are of the most delightful taste. You leave a little tail of the ear, two inches long, or thereabouts, to turn it and handle it by. You take a thin piece of butter, which will cling to the knife on one side, while you gently rub it over the ear from the other side; then the ear is buttered: then you take a little salt according to your fancy, and sprinkle it over the ear: you then take the tail of the ear in one hand, and bite the grains off the cobb." In the shape of porridge the corn is called suppawn.
Mush is another form of the corn meal; Mr. Cobbett says, "it is not a word to squall out over a piano-forte," "but it is a very good word, and a real English word." It seems to mean something which is half pudding, half porridge. Homany is the shape in which the corn meal is generally used in the southern states of America, but Mr. Cobbett has never seen it. Samp is the corn skinned, as we shell oats, or make pearl barley; it is then boiled with pork or other meat, as we boil peas. It is in fact corn soup, superior to all preparations of pulse, on account of their indigestible qualities.
The corn flour is not so adhesive as the wheat flour; it is consequently not so well adapted to puddings and bread-making: nevertheless, Mr. Cobbett contrives to show that his corn can make both inimitably; but in respect of cakes there are no cakes in the world like the corn-cakes of America. They have the additional merit of being made in a minute: "A Yankee will set hunger at defiance if you turn him into a wilderness with a flint and steel, and a bag of corn-meal or flour. He comes to the spot where he means to make his cookery, makes a large wood fire upon the ground, which soon consumes every thing combustible beneath, and produces a large heap of coals. While the fire is preparing itself, the Yankee takes a little wooden or tin bowl (many a one has done it in the crown of his hat), in which he mixes up a sufficient quantity of his meal with water, and forms it into a cake of about a couple of inches thick. With a pole he then draws the fire open, and lays the cake down upon where the centre of the fire was. To avoid burning, he rakes some ashes over the cake first; he then rakes on a suitable quantity of the live embers, and his cake is cooked in a short space of time." According to Mr. Cobbett, he grew ninety-five bushels of corn on one acre of ground; reckoning the value of this corn equal to bad and stale samples of wheat, which, at the time Mr. Cobbett was writing, was selling at 45s. the quarter, Mr. Cobbett's crop would be worth nearly 27l. the acre, three times, as he says, that of the average crop of wheat this same year. But in order to compare the worth of this crop with that of others, there are several considerations to be entered into besides this; these it is needless to say, Mr. Cobbett shows are wholly in favour of Cobbett's corn. However this may be, and even making a large allowance for the determination of the writer to see every thing he loves couleur de rose, we think there can be little doubt of this fact, that he has made out a case for experiment, and still more, that they who have not made the experiment, are not entitled either to distrust or to gainsay his assertions. It should be observed, that there are two branches in Mr. Cobbett's argument; he maintains that his variety of Indian corn may be grown in this country: but should this not be confirmed by more general experiments, still his praise of the plant, as a valuable substitute for wheat, and even its superior applicability to domestic purposes, demand the same attention as before; for if it may be grown, it may be imported, as from Canada, without the imposition of a burthensome duty.
As homeward I hurried, within "The Wen,"
At midnight, all alone.
My knees, like the knees of a drunken man,
Foreboding shook, and my eyes began
To see two lamps for one.
The lights burnt blue, as they're wont to do
When Spirits are in the wind.
Ho! ho! thought I, that's an ominous hue,
And a glance on either side I threw,
But I fear'd to look behind.
A smell, as of gas, spread far and wide,
But sulphur it was, I knew;
My sight grew dim, and my tongue was tied,
And I thought of my home, and my sweet fireside,
And the friends I had left at loo!
And I took once more a hurried peep
Along and across the street,
And then I beheld a figure creep,
Like a man that is walking in his sleep,
Or a watchman on his beat.
A lantern, dangling in the wind,
He bore, and his shaggy and thick
Great-coat was one of the dread-nought kind,—
What seem'd his right hand trail'd behind
The likeness of a stick.
The sky with clouds became o'ercast,
And it suddenly set to raining,—
And the gas-lights flicker'd in the blast,
As that thing of the lantern and dread-nought past,
And I heard him thus complaining—
"A murrain seize—a pize upon—
Plague take—the New Police!
Why couldn't they do with the ancient one,
As ages and ages before have done,
And let us remain in peace?
"No more, ah! never more, I fear,
Will a perquisite, (woe is me!)
Or profits, or vails, the Charley cheer;
Then, alas! for his tender consort dear,
And his infant progeny!
"Farewell to the freaks of the jovial spark,
Who rejoiced in a gentle riot,—
To the midnight spree, and the morning lark,
There'll never more be any fun after dark,
And people will sleep in quiet.
"No more shall a Tom or a Jerry now
Engaging in fisty battle,
Break many heads and the peace;—for how,
I should like to know, can there be a row,
When there is ne'er a rattle?
"One cry no more on the ear shall grate,
Convivial friends alarming,
Who straightway start and separate,
Blessing themselves that it is so late;—
To break up a party is charming!
"But our ruthless foe wilt be punish'd anon;—
Bundled out without pity or parley,
His office and occupation gone,
Lost, disgraced, despised, undone,
Oh! then he'll remember the Charley."
Just then I beheld a Jarvey near,
Which on the spot presenting,
I scrambled in like one in fear
With a ghost at his heels, or a flea in his ear,
And he was left lamenting!
Good style of living consists in having a mansion exquisitely fitted up with all the expensive bijouterie compatible with true elegance, yet avoiding the lavish superabundance of gimcrackery which borders on vulgarity; comely serving men in suitable liveries, all so well initiated into the mysteries of their respective duties, that a guest could imagine himself in a fairy palace, where plates vanish without the contamination of a mortal finger and thumb, and glasses move without a jingle: then the feast is exquisitely cooked and exquisitely served; the table groans not, the hostess carves not; but one delicious dainty is followed by another, and each remove brings forth a dish more piquante than the last: every thing is delightful, but there must appear to be an abundance of nothing; two spoonsful alone of each delicious viand should repose under its silver cover; and he who dared ask to be helped a second time to any thing, ought to be sentenced to eternal transportation from the regions of haut ton.
Bad style of living—Shocking even to describe! A large house in streets or squares unknown; hot, ugly men servants, stumbling over one another in their uncouth eagerness to admit you; your name mispronounced, and shouted at the drawing-room door; your host and hostess in a fuss, apologizing, asking questions, and boring you to death; dinner at length announced, but no chance of extrication from the dull drawing-room, because the etiquette of precedence is not rightly understood, and nobody knows who ought to be led out first; all the way down stairs a dead silence, and then the difficulty of distributing the company almost equals the previous dilemma of the drawing-room: wives are wittily warned against sitting by husbands, and two gentlemen are facetiously interdicted from sitting together; the hostess takes the top of the table to be useful, not ornamental, for fish and joint and turkey, must she carve; while her husband, at the other end of the mahogany, must equally make a toil of a pleasure, and yet smile as if it were a pleasure to toil! The beasts of the earth and the birds of the air appear upon the board, scorning disguise, in their own proper forms, just as they stepped out of Noah's ark, always excepting those who are too unwieldy to be present in whole skins; and even they send their joints to table in horrid unsophistication; Sweets follow, but how unlike the souffles of Ude! Grim green gooseberries, lurking under their heavy coverings of crust; and custards, the plain produce of the dairy, embittered with bay leaves, cinnamon, and cloves! Cheese follows, with the alternatives of port wine and porter; and all this weary time the servants have been knocking your head about, thumbing your plate, or pouring lobster sauce into your pockets!—Sharpe's Mag.