Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1894-08-23
THE PIE HABIT.
Some CONNER by Newspaper in the Pic
Belt.

Belt.
II is quite plausible that his diet Is
largely responsible for the New En-
glander His crabbedness and obduracy
are the natural consequences of the
Puritan; but three centuries of pie eat
ing and cider drinking have unqucs-
tionably filtered additional verjuice in
to his blood. There is authority for
the assertion that pie has been a
greater moral and physical bane to
New England than whisky. One may
not be able in support of it to point
out an instance where, after eating a
quarter section, man went home and
killed his wife. The methods of the
pie-eater are slower; he kills with
lingering torment with harrying day
in and day out the meek, long-suffer.
ing wife. Miss Wilkins has shown in
Pembroke" what pitiless, unrelent-
ing brow-beater a man can make OF
himself through indulgence of the pie
habit. Were it not for his abnormal
appetite for pies-suggesting to his
fancy that even pies made from the
weeds of the field are edible-one could
declare old Cephas impossible, but,
having that appetite, he is wholly
credible. Iron-jawed Deborah Thayer,
whose unrelieved asperity was the
cause of little Ephraim's tragic es-
capade, was likewise a victim of this
New England vice. Miss wilkins has
her undergo poetic but exquisitely just
punishment, and whether the poor boy
died of his mother'r cruelty or of one
of her cider-coohed mince pies doesn't
in the least affect the meaning of the
situation.
Mr.. Kippling is the last to remark
upon the gastronomic depravity of the
New Highlander. He told some one in
London the other day that his Yer
mont home was on the border of the
great pie belt" and when asked lead.
ing question about the temper of the
people he now lived among replied
thoughtfully with: "Have you consid.
ered the physiological condition of a
people which eats pie for breakfast, pie
for dinner, pie for supper, and takes
sweetstuffs between whiles? Dyspepsia
is endemic; you can't expect anything
else" Such dict is notoriously un.
healthful. Accompanied by the drink.
ing of beverage that turns the juices
of human kindness to vinegar, and in,
fiuenced by the climate that "makeS
brains more than muscle, and nerves
more than either" and the action of il
all upon constitution singularly irri
table by inheritance might have beer
accurately foretold.
We Rhode Islanders are near the mid
die of the east boundary of the pie
belt. All New England, all New Yorl
state, part of Pennsylvania, most o.
Maryland, and the country lying be
| tween the northern and southern limit.
thus indicated to as far west as the
western boundary of Indiana, comprise
the American pic belt. In the bacl
counties, especially, do the people
serve pie at the three regular daily
meals and the children, when they car
by hook or crook, eat it at all times
Hot doughnuts and cheese are not hal
such luncheon favorites. On many al
urban breakfast table the pie still
holds its own against the restrictions
of the doctors and the protests of tn,
ventricles, which have to extract from
it nourishment.
Probably Boston consumes more pie,
than any other city in the belt. They
have there the largest pie factories
We have here-it is not said boastfull,
the little brother of that factory
which is tantamount to saying that al
eaters of what johnson called 'pasty,
we can not occupy any closer relation
than that to Boston's full-grown repu
tation. They have there pie factor,
that not only stands on patriotic soil
but one that is located in an old churcl
building. And thus the shadow O
Bunker Hill and the shade of Cottol
Mathcr both help to consecrate this ma
| tive form of dessert-Cotton Mathe
doing his part upon the under crust
which is doubtless the essential cause o
its utter indigestibilitv. - Providenc
| Journal.