Popping Corn

Image from Heirlooms by Ashton House

POPPING CORN.

We were popping corn,
Sweet Kitty and I;
It danced about,
And it danced up high.
The embers were hot,
In their fiery light;
And it went up brown,
And it came down white.
White and beautiful,
Crimped and curled,
The prettiest fairy dance in the world!
The embers were hot,
In their fiery light,
And it went up brown,
and it came down white.
Ah! many a time are the embers hot,
And the human spirit can brook it not,
Yet radiant, forth from the fiery light,
Cometh transform’d and enrobed in white.

The Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Jan 26, 1860

POPPING CORN.

And there they sat a-popping corn,
John Stiles and Susan Cutter;
John Stiles as stout as any ox,
And Susan fat as butter.

And there they sat and shelled the corn,
And poked and stirred the fire,
And talked of different kinds of ears,
And hitched their chairs up nigher.

Then Susan she the popper shook,
Then John he shook the popper,
Till both their faces grew as red
As sauce pans made of copper.

And there they shelled, and popped and ate
All kinds of fun a-poking,
And he haw-hawed at her remarks
And she laughed at his joking.

And still they popped, and still they ate,
(John’s mouth was like a hopper,)
And stirred the fire, and sprinkled salt,
And shook, and shook the popper.

The clock struck nine, the clock struck ten,
And still the corn kept popping;
It struck eleven and then struck twelve,
And still no signs of stopping.

And John he ate; and Sue she thought –
The corn did pop and patter,
Till John cried out, “The corn’s afire!
Why, Susan what’s the matter?”

She said, “John Stiles, it’s one o’clock!
You’ll die of indigestion;
I’m sick of all this popping corn –
Why don’t you pop the question?”

The Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Feb 26, 1863

All Together Now – Relief Legislation

Congress and President Hoover Under the Mistletoe

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 18, 1930

Unemployment and Drought Relief Problems

All Together Now!

“Our Country is To-Day Stronger and Richer in Resources, in Equipment, in Skill, Than Ever in History.”

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Dec 4, 1930

Oh, My! Eskimo Pie!

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) Dec 31, 1921

Eskimo Pie Inventor Makes Fortune
BY ROY GIBBONS

Chicago, Feb. 13 — Christian K. Nelson came to Chicago from Omaha 15 months ago with 19 cents and an idea.

Today the 19 cents has grown to a steadily increasing fortune of six figures. It’ll be well over a million before Nelson pays his income tax.

What did it?

The idea!

Nelson’s idea was to cover a square of cold ice cream with a layer of hot chocolate, thus caking a confection with real ice cream inside.

He got that idea while he was managing his father’s ice cream plant out in Onawa, Ia. And he furthered it while he was studying chemistry at college.

When he was graduated he peddled the idea around from ice cream factory to ice cream factory. Everybody laughed at him.

“Cover cold ice cream with hot chocolate? Man; you’re crazy!” they’d say.

But Russell Stover, manager of an ice cream plant at Omaha, was different. He thought Nelson’s idea could be put over. And together Stover and Nelson did put it over.

That’s why you see a big yellow sign advertising “Eskimo Pie” in your confectionery store window.

For Nelson’s the inventor of Eskimo Pie.

Nelson’s not making it. His company, composed of himself, Stover and others, is selling licenses to firms in other cities to manufacture the confection.

Today there are more than 1,000,000 Eskimo pies eaten daily. And Nelson’s company gets 5 cents royalty on every dozen pies.

And Nelson’s busy with an adding machine trying to figure up his income.

“Don’t lose heart,” Nelson advises others. “I kept at my hunch and plugged — that’ why I succeeded.

“Just don’t give up. It seems to me that too many folks are only too anxious to tell the world they’re licked.”

Ironwood Daily Globe (Ironwood, Michigan) Feb 13, 1922

Image from Emporia State University

STOVER KING OF ESKIMO PIE
“Eskimo Pie”, now figuratively and almost literally, in “everybody’s mouth,” promises to make a near-millionaire, if not a real one, out of a Johnson county boy. Russell Stover, the inventor of the chocolate and ice cream confection that bears that name, is a son of Mr. John R. Stover, a prominent Johnson county farmer, who lives one mile west of Indian Lookout, where the young candy man, who is heading the Russell Stover company of Chicago, was born.

Sure to Enrich Him

The “Eskimo pie” is destined to enrich the Iowa City and S.U.I. boy of other days, is indicated strongly by a letter Mr. Stover received from his son today. The inventor is traveling, far and near, putting in 18 hours a day, licensing manufacturers to produce his confection. He has more than 250 on the list now, and more than 40,000 retail stores are handling the article already. He predicts a sale of 2,000,000 a day, and the Stover company will get 5 cents a dozen royalty, he writes, on these. This spells $3,000,000 a year for the Iowa Citian and his associates.

To Entire World

Plans are making to ship to China, Japan, and all parts of Europe. Mr. Stover has been called to New York and New Haven, Conn., this week, to address conventions of manufacturers. His traveling secretary is General Leonard Wood’s presidential campaign secretary, Fugitt, who declares the “Eskimo” campaign is more exciting than the political fight.

Some big lawsuits may follow, as the company alleges imitators and infringers are busy violating the Stover copyrights and patents. Test suits will be instituted in the metropolises.

Some Interesting Figures

Some figures are of interest in connection with the Iowa City man’s business campaign. The company telephone bill — before breakfast — in a single day, is $160. The advertising bills are enormous. A contract for a double page in Saturday Evening Post, in February calls for $14,000.

Iowa City Press Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa) Jan 16, 1922

Inventor of Eskimo Pie Prefers His Old Job As School Teacher

CHICAGO — (Special) — Anybody’d think dipping ice cream into hot chocolate would melt the ice cream. Christian Kent Nelson discovered the way to do it, however, at just the right temperature. The result — eskimo pie.

Until he made his discovery Nelson was a poor but contented teacher at Onawa, Ia. Today money’s pouring in on him so fast that he’s scared. “I want to stay human,” he says.

He tried hard enough to market his idea before it “caught on.” Most people he approached were skeptical. Finally Russell Stover of Omaha went in with him. From that moment the golden tide began to rise. For Nelson, at any rate, it rose too high.

“Money! The more I see of it, the less I like it. I’d rather be with my books, or back on the job as teacher again,” he exclaims. He hasn’t even bought an automobile.

Perhaps wealth came a bit too fast — about a year, from a shoe-string to affluence is sudden enough to be disconcerting.

Nelson’s a graduate of Nevada University. He’s only 29. His father and mother are living and he has brothers and sisters. He’s unmarried.

When a reporter asked him, “Do you intend to take a wife?” “Maybe,” he answered.

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) May 25, 1922

Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) Mar 2, 1922

Image from D-Lib Magazine Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation

The Modern Trend

How times do change,
Oh, me! Oh, my!
We ne’er hear now
Of Eskimo pie.
– Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser.

And customs too,
Have changed, my lan’!
Nobody ev –
Er shoots the can.
– Macon, Ga., Telegraph.

Ah, yes, ’tis true,
Only gran-pap
Knows the meaning of
The word, “Gid-dap!”

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Sep 10, 1925

Decatur Review (Decatur, Illinois) May 14, 1922

*****

A native Chinese might be amazed at the sight of chop suey as it is known in America, but probably no more than an Eskimo on seeing his first Eskimo pie.

Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) Sep 26, 1929

Daily Review (Haywood, California) Sep 12, 1949

Image from the American History Archives Center – THE ESKIMO PIE CORPORATION RECORDS, 1921-1996

Getting Rich
[excerpt]

The more people you assist or entertain, the greater your income.

Often you comment along these lines: Einstein, a super-scientist of the sort that appears only once in centuries, makes less money than the inventor of some trifling thing like the Eskimo pie, ice cream cone or safety pin.

The answer to this is that Einstein serves only a small and limited number of customers — scientists — while the other inventors serve millions, each contributing his mite to the inventor.

In any scheme to get rich, don’t forget the importance of doing something that will serve a great multitude.

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Mar 2, 1922

A highbrow is a person who wants his Eskimo pie a la mode.

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Mar 16, 1922

Told Cop To “Get Out With His Eskimo Pie”; Aggie Wanted a “Fag”

NEW YORK, Aug. 17. — Aggie Kelley, aged 14, was advised to go back to her father and stay with him by Recorder Kane in Bayonne, N.J., today, when she was brought before him.

Policeman Bonlin found the girl yesterday sitting on a curbstone crying.

The lieutenant sent a policeman to buy ice cream for the little girl, mean while putting her in a room by herself. When he came back he was met at the door by Aggie, who was smoking a cigarette. She told him to get out “with that Eskimo pie.”

“If you want to do me a favor,” shed added, “you might bring me a small pack of cigarettes.”

She told the recorder she had a good home with her father on a canal boat and she wanted to go there as quickly as she could.

New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Aug 17, 1922

Image from The Public “I”

YE OLD TYME TOURNAMENT

The hoi-polloi
With shouts of joy
Doth group abut
In twos and bunch
and munch the festive Eskimo pie
And chew on other lightish lunches.

Cease your talk
For down the walk
Come all the buxom corn-fed maidens;
Hearken to their dissertation –
“I says to him — he says to me –”
The corn’s all right — so are the maidens
But Gawd forgive the combination.

With close shaved necks
And sunburned beaks
In phalanx come
The village shieks!

Who is the cent of this group
Whose checkered vest has spots of soup?
He hold the power of life and death!
Two-foot watch chain, eye of eagle
Look him o’er — the local Kleagle!

With Beech-nut filling
Up his jaw
Here comes the long are
Of the law
His uniform is slightly tight,
(‘Twas made for some less portly wight).
Constantly, at greatish rate,
The Law, he doth expectorate.
And every time he spits by chance
He breaks a city ordinance.

‘Tis after nine,
The crowd is gone,
All but the shieks
Who linger on
Within some lowly pea-pool den,
And dissipate and drink pink pop
‘Til oft’ as late as half-past ten.

The Vidette Messenger (Valparaiso, Indiana) Mar 1, 1929

Pirates, Opium and the Plague

Three Hundred Criminals Beheaded.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 12. — The steamer City of Pekin has arrived from Hong Kong and Yokahama, bringing advices that 300 pirates, robbers and other criminals were beheaded in Kwantung province during the last few days of the old Chinese new year.

New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Mar 18, 1891

Things theatrical for the past two weeks have been rather of routine. The near approach of the holidays is having a depressing effect on the attendance at the Faurot. With tonight’s performance the Holden repertoire company will have closed their engagement of one week. Only two shows are booked for the coming week, the first being that startling success, “King of the Opium Ring,” this is booked for Tuesday night.

KING OF THE OPIUM RING

No doubt that enthusiasm is already being manifested concerning the engagement of the Chinese-American play, “King of the Opium Ring,” which will be the attraction at Opera House Tuesday, December 19.

The play comes with a repute for great success at the Academy of Music, New York, where it played to the capacity of that great theatre for 150 nights. It is a sensational melodrama which is said to contain more different kinds of villiany and Chinamen than anything that has been seen for a long time.

The scenes are laid in San Francisco’s famous Chinatown. The first act represents Deadman’s Dock, showing the escape of the smuggling yacht, “Halcyon” with a revenue cutter firing a fusillade from a rapid fire gun.

The second act is an opium joint, which from the outside is an innocent looking laundry, but the interior shows side rooms with upper sections fitted with bunks in which men and women lay with little lamps at their side inhaling “happy thought,” through realistic looking opium pipes. Opium smoking is a form of a vice which most theater-goers are familiar with only through the newspaper reports of a raid, and the realistic layouts offered in this act are a decided novelty.

In the third act is pictured the heart of Chinatown on the occasion of the Chinese New Year; the great mart, the Chinese theater and Joss house, together with the many illuminations are shown, and the thrilling climax of the rescue of the Queen from an upper balcony by the wonderful Chinese acrobats.

The last set is the assembly room of the swell Chink club of ‘Frisco, the Fong Quay Society, and is an exact reproduction of the original. This scene is said to be one of Oriental magnificence; in fact, it may be said that all of the scenes are the same, true to the originals.

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Dec 16, 1899

Image from Geocaching – Plague!

BLACK PLAGUE IN HAWAII.

Breaks Out In Two Islands — Situation In Honolulu Improves.

Honolulu, Feb. 15, via San Francisco, Feb. 23. — The black plague has broken out at both Kahului, on the island of Maui, and Hilo, on the island of Hawaii. The latest advices report seven deaths at Kahului, all Chinese, and one at Hilo, a Portuguese woman, the wife of A.G. Seneo. The news was received here Feb. 10 in a letter from Sheriff Baldwin.

Chinatown in Kahului, which had about 300 inhabitants, has been destroyed by fire. The sanitary conditions were worse than in Honolulu. The towns of Lahaine and Hauhua have established quarantine against other portions of Maui. An unfortunate feature of the case is the proximity to Kahului of several large plantations with their thousands of laborers. It is thought that the plague reached Kahului through the shipment of Chinese new year goods.

In Honolulu the health situations is better than at any time since the outbreak of the plague. Not a case has developed in the last ten days. Although the board of health is confident that the trouble is over, vigilance will not be relaxed. Up to Feb. 6, the date of the last case, there had been 50 deaths from the plague in this city. The board of health has passed a resolution prohibiting the landing of all merchandise from countries where the bubonic plague exists.

Saturday, Feb. 17, has been set apart as “rat killing” day, and a great slaughter of the rodents is expected.

Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) Feb 24, 1900

Man or Ass?

Image from Old and Welsh

Reconstruction, Negro Suffrage, &c. [excerpt]

Our fathers, in the adoption of the Constitutions of most of the States, required a property qualification before granting the right to vote. But this was a very mistaken and mischievious distinction, and experience soon convinced all reflecting men that there were thousands of intelligent and very worthy citizens, who from one cause or another, never acquired sufficient property to entitle them to vote, and who where, therefore, denied that privilege, while on the other hand, there were multitudes of those who possessed wealth, who were so depraved and ignorant that they were totally disqualified to vote understandingly, even on the most common and simple political issues of the day.

Benjamin Franklin explosed this humbug most thoroughly when he asked the question, if a man could not vote without owning an ass, and could vote if he did — whether it was the man or the ass which really voted?

Alton Weekly Telegraph (Alton, Illinois) Jun 16, 1865

Good Brown Bread

Image from Yankee Magazine online – Granny’s Brown Bread – Recipe at the link

BROWN BREAD.

I’m a Yankee, born ‘mong the rye and corn
Of the Eastern States, ’tis said;
And a tribute I’ll pay, in a rhyming way,
To their loaves of good brown bread.

I’ve lived at best, six years in the West,
Where wheat is used instead,
But in all my round I’ve seldom found
A loaf of good brown bread.

Since I have roamed to my boyhood’s home,
The rocks and hills I dread;
Yet in spite of that I’m growing fat,
Every day, on good brown bread.

You still may make white bread and cake,
By style and fancy led,
But I tell you, sir, that I prefer
A loaf of good brown bread.

N. E. Farmer.

The Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachustetts) Oct 22, 1858

*****

Here are a couple of old recipes found in a Google book search:

Yankee Brown Bread – 1848

To read about the “pearlash” mentioned in the above recipe: Food Facts & Trivia

Apparently, in 1848, they did not steam the bread, but baked it in the oven. This recipe also lacks molasses, so I guess it’s a more “primitive” brown bread.

Boston Brown Bread – 1893

This recipe includes buttermilk and molasses, and is steamed for five hours. The Granny’s Brown Bread linked with the picture, only steams for two to three hours.

“A Journalist,” said the Great Napoleon…

Image from Eponymous Flower

“A journalist,” said the great Napoleon, “is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a hundred thousand bayonets.”

The Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Mar 5, 1858

Woman’s Hard Won Freedom

THE REVOLT

Here’s one little old-fashioned girl that’s NOT going to wear corsets and long skirts no matter what happens!

THE SURRENDER

We’ll have to admit we were wrong about the new fashions, they’re really VERY becoming!

Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois) Oct 24, 1929

Axe it

Image from Old Picture of the Day

If you want to know whether a tree is hollow or not, axe it.

The Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Mar 5, 1858

Franklin – The Home of his Boyhood

Image from the ThinkQuest page, Humble Beginnings: Franklin in Boston

FRANKLIN: — THE HOME OF HIS BOYHOOD.

There are a few places yet left in Boston, of universal interest. Do you see that old house on the corner of Hanover and Union streets, with a gilt ball protruding from its corner, diagonally into the street? It has no architectural pretensions to arrest a passer-by. It is a plain brick house, of three stories, with small windows, close together, and exceeding small panes of glass in them, the walls of a dingy yellow. Yet it is a house warming in associations interesting to well-nurtured minds throughout the civilized world. Read the name upon the bell, and you will get an inkling of my meaning — JOSIAS FRANKLIN, 1698. Yes, that is the very roof under which Benjamin Franklin grew up. He was not born there, but his father removed there when he was but six months old, so that all his recollections of home must have been connected with those walls. The side of the house on Union street remains as it was in the days of Franklin’s boyhood; but that on Hanover street has been shamefully treated. Nearly the whole front has been cut out to make room for two monstrously disproportioned show-windows. And this house, so full, as I have just said, of associations, is fuller yet of bonnets! Yes, by the head of the Prophet, of Bonnets! It is a bonnet Warehouse, and from the inordinate windows, aforesaid, bonnets of all hues and shapes ogle you with side-long  glances, or else stare you openly out of countenance, while mountain piles of bandboxes tower to the ceiling of the upper story, eloquent, like Faith, of things unseen. Heaven, forbid that I should say anything in derogation of bonnets, any more than of the fair heads that wear them, but I would that they had another Repository.

It was my good fortune to go over the house before it had undergone this metamorphosis. It was occupied in part at least, some eight or ten years ago, by a colored man, of the name of Stewart, a dealer in old clothes, who thought of buying the premises, and wanted my advice about it, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity to view them. The interior of the house was then, I should judge, in the same condition that it was when the worthy old soap-boiler and that sturdy rebel (in youth as in age) his world famous son, lived there. There were the very rooms in which the child Franklin played, the very stairs up and down which he romped, the very window seats on which he stood to look out into the street. The shop on the street was unquestionably the place where he used to cut wicks for candles, and fill the moulds, and wait upon the customers. I pleased myself in imagining which room it was in which the father sat, patriarch-like, at his table surrounded by his thirteen children, all of whom grew up to years of maturity, and were married. And you may be sure I did not fail to take a peep into the cellar, where poor-Richard, in his infantile economy of time, proposed to his father that he should say grace over the whole barrel of beef they were putting down in the lump, instead of over each piece in detail, as it came to the table. A proposition which inclined the good brother of the Old South Church to fear that his youngest hope was given over to reprobate mind, and was but little better than one of the wicked.

Image from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

And I would have given a trifle to know which of the chambers it was that was Franklin’s own, where he educated himself, as it were, by stealth, Where he used to read ‘Bunyan’s Works, in separate little volumes,’ and ‘Barton’s Historical Collections,’ — ‘small Chapman’s books, and cheap; forty volumes in all’ — and Plutarch’s Live, not to mention ‘a book of De Foe’s called An Essay to do Good,’ and where too, his lamp (or more probably his candle’s end) was ‘oft seen at midnight’s hour,’ as he sat up the greatest part of the night, devouring the books which his friend the bookseller’s apprentice, used to lend him over night, out of the shop, to be returned the next morning. How the rogue must have enjoyed them! Seldom have literary pleasure been relished with such a gusto as by that hungry boy.

It will not be many years before this monument of the most celebrated man that Boston, not to say America ever produced, will be demolished, and the place that knows it will know it not more, unless something be done to save it. It will be a burning shame, and lasting disgrace to Boston, with all its pretensions to liberality, and its affections of reverence for its great men, to suffer the most historical of its houses to be destroyed, when the rise of real estate in that neighborhood shall seal its doom. It is a shame that it has been left so long to take the chances of business. It should have been bought years ago, and placed in the hands of the Historical Society, or some other permanent body, in trust, to be preserved for ever, in its original condition. It is not late to restore it to something like its first est???e, and to save it from utter destruction. If it be not done, it will be a source of shame and sorrow when it is too late.

The house in which Franklin was born has been destroyed within this century. That house stood in Milk street, a little below the Old South Church, on the other side of the way, and the spot if marked by a ‘Fortunate Warehouse’ five stories high, which forms a fitting pendant to the Bonnet Warehouse, in Hanover street. The printing office of James Franklin, where Franklin served his apprenticeship, where he used to put his anonymous communications under the door, where he used to study when the rest were gone to dinner, and where he used sometimes to get a flogging from his brother — was in Queen, now Court street, nearly opposite the Court house on the corner of Franklin Avenue, which, if I am not mistaken, derives its name from this curious circumstance.

American Freeman (Prairieville, Wisconsin) Dec 15, 1847