The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-10-07
HOW, from a summer Ho.rder.

returned summer lodger vents his feel
ings in wall hich ought to touch the
heart of every farmers wife. This unhappy
man read seductive advertisements of
country board in a shaded farmhouse at
$5 O week. till he went quite off his head.
Cream, fresh milk and eggs. Strawberries,
summer apples, cheese curds dressed with
cream and water crosses, golden, unsalted
butter, home made bread, broiled chicken,
honey from the hive, white potatoes burst
ing like snow from their coats, rich Lima
beans, egg plant and cantelopes, and birds
and flowers, and hammock under a shade
tree. sheets smelling of lavender and rose
leaves-behold, did he not see all these in
sort of heavenly dreams
He went.
Here is what he got to eat: Heavy bread,
soggy potatoes, muddy coffee, and-heaven
save his poor insidesl-beefsteak, fried,
every time In the city nobody that is any
body ever fries beefsteak. 1t is always
broiled But this poor victim, who fled to
the country to get something good to eat,
got nothing but vile. leathery, fried beef
steak from the time he went there till his
return to the city.
Sometimes they didn even have the beef
Full often 1t was nothing but salt pork. At
dinner there was villainous everlasting
pie" gross, soggy and dyspeptic, like every
other article of food in that doomed house
The farmer, the farmers wife and daugh-
tiers had lost all their teeth, and had COM
plexions like the beefsteak they fried and
the muddy coffee they boiled. After seeing
the fare they lived on the summer boarder
wondered they didn't commit suicide or get
sent to lunatic asylum. He wonders no
longer why so large a proportion of farmers
and their wives go crazy.
There was not a trace of any of the de-
licious articles of country food mentioned.
But the farmers family all believed in total
depravity and original sin, and when the
summer boarder tasted that pie and salt
pork he began to belieye in it too.
At rare intervals there was some fruit
sauce on the table, for the whole family
about enough for one healthy person
The summer boarder packed his traps in
continentIy and returned TO the city where
he could get milk, even if there was a sus-
picion OF water in it, and fruit, even though
the bloom of the dew was of it, and it had
passed through maybe half a dozen not
over-clean hands before it got to his mouth.
And he signs that farmers families are
SO lost to their advantages. Oh, that they
would live up to their blue china, as it
werei In his disgust and disappointment
the gentleman is free to aver that farm men
spend enough time loating around the post
Office and country grocery to make for
themselves such fruit and vegetable gardens
and poultry houses as would enable them
to live hike kings Then, too, the hapless
Summer boarder would not only ungrudg
ingly pay them big price for the luxuries
he got, but would, besides, conceive for ths
farmers family a friendship that would out
last time, and be bright recollection all
through. And be is more than half right
p S.--Be it plainly understood that that
summer boarder did not visit any OF the
homes of the readers of this column. He
had no such good luck.