The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-12-01
ChestnutS.


1t is the time of the year when people
who have never been taught any better
| 90 chestnutting.
Chestnuts do not grow wild out West
Let the mighty West remember that
with grateful heart on Thanksgiving
Day. On the boundless prairies the
chestnut only grows in the train-boy's
basket.
The chestnut is the home of the riot
ing worm. No self-respecting worm
will live in the ground if he can find a
chestnut He enters it by hole which
cannot be perceived, and once in the
nut he riots in solitude and abundance.
until some incautious man reads the
riot act to him. A chestnut without a
worm is as great rarity as bee with
out a sting.
Where all the chestnuts come from.
goodness only knows. don't. They
don't grow on the trees. The Prince
went out one day, with the little ones
at the parsonage He came home with
half peck of beautiful brown chest
nuts. | smiled at the child's enthusi-
asm, and said to his mother:
Il will 60 ont with him myself, and
| get couple of bushel.
| did 90 out with him. | took some
things to bring the nuts home in; to-
wit, grain sack, large double-decker
market basket, and box; the aggregate
capacity of these vessels was two and
one-half bushels. Dr. McLain and
Louie accompanied us, with a some
what larger equipment
| Tho Y1roVo1.tinn of the chestnut bt1I.S
to chestnuts is as the leaves of the al
about. You walk over acres of hulls,
you turn them over, you look into them,
you stumble and fall on them. At last
your heart bounds with JOY. You find
a bur with chestnut in it. You get
all the needles on the bur into your
two thumbs while you extract that
chestnut, and then the ever-present
worm looks out and denounces the bar
barity of eviction.
/ carried the chestnuts home that
night in my pocket The grain bag |
folded up and hid under my coat, |
threw the box away and the basket l
filled with hickory nuts. After it was
full, a native drove past and looked at
me kindly.
There's lots and bushels of she'll
barks down on the other road about a
mile" he said, with peculiar empha-
sis on the shell-barks.
''Well, what's there?" asked with a
sinking heart"
pig nuts" he replied, they're no
good; nobody ever gathers them
l lied, feebly, saying that | kept a
pig and had gathered these nuts for
feed, and the native looked incredulous
and drove on.
''What you emptyin' all dem nuts
over de fence for?' the Prince de-
manded.
told him there were motives in the
human heart that sometimes shaped
our actions, too deep and intricate for
him to comprehend, and then the Doe
tor and gathered up the children and
trespassed across a field to forbidden
chestnut tree, escorted by q whole herd
of cattle and a Mr.. Durham, who
paved the ground in another field and
talked bass at us through the rails
We made a great haul at this tree
| The venerable old monarch of the forest
was about two thousand years old, and
its branches had q spread of about
twenty acres. 1t was cloudy with
burs, but we got seven nuts and ten
worms.
| know what the worms are for.
They are to keep people from eating
the chestnuts Were it not for the
worms many people would eat chest
nuts who cannot now be induced to
taste them, and great amount of suf-
fering would thereby be entailed upon
the human race. Of all the awful.
tiresome, maddening things in the world
to eat, a chestnut is the lingeringest.
A man may start in on chestnut say
about the 10th of October. He can
chew it all that day, and from time to
time make desperate efforts to swallow
fine fragments of it. 1t will make him
cough all night, and ne can resume the
process of mastication early in the
morning and keep it up all the next
day. 1t will last him that week, and
Sunday he cannot sing at church with
out blowing dessicated chestnut all over
the pew in front of him. He's lucky if
he finally gets that chestnut chewed
and swallowed by the end of Novem-
Der. always hated it, and since |
have met it in its native haunt I am
less than ever friend of the chestnut.
| P1yaIj11 r,fn