Nutter

“ Justice Lowe.
'Zekiel Irons, me! What Zekiel Irons charge me with the crime which he was here, not two hours since, fastening on oath upon Charles Nutter! Why, Sir, he asked me to bring him to your residence in the morning, that he might swear to the information which he repeated in my presence, and of which there's a note in that desk. 'Pon my life, Sir, 'tis an agreeable society, this; bedlam broke loose—the mad directing the mad, and both falling foul of the sane. ”

“ BRUSH.
Well, and what harm? Nuts are very wholesome food, I am sure. And don't you lay up any store of provisions for the winter, then?
TOUCHMENOT.
Not I, indeed! I am better employed in the winter than in eating. I sleep all the winter, Mr. Nutcracker! When the weather gets a little colder, perhaps in a few days, I shall creep into my snug nest which I have made under the roots of a great tree. ”

“ In fairy tales, we often find good fairies using Nuts as their carriages: as, in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Mercutio speaks of Queen Mab arriving in a Nut-shell.——There is a legend that St. Agatha every year crosses the sea from Catania to Gallipoli on a Nut-shell, which she employs as a boat.——Authorities on the subject say that to dream that you see Nut-trees, and that you crack and eat their fruit, signifies riches and content gained with toil and pain. Clusters of Nuts imply happiness and success: to dream of gathering Nuts is a bad omen ”

“ The cracking of nuts was an important ceremony among the young men and maidens, who threw nuts into the fire, and from the way in which they cracked, or burned, foretold all kinds of happiness or misery for themselves. ”

“ Burning the nuts is a famous charm. They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them on the fire, and accordingly as they burn quietly together, or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship will be.—Brand’s Popular Antiquities. ”

“ For this purpose two nuts are dropped into a bright red fire, side by side, and the name of the lad and lass, whose fates are to be decided, is given to each nut. The nuts themselves give the decision. If they burn quietly together then all is well ”

“ Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They are in such abundance, that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish, nor a young man, nor a young woman,—for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute of country gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet has had at least half a dozen this season; but no one has found out these. And they are so full too, we lose half of them from over-ripeness; they drop from the socket at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds. May is as fond of nuts as a squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal dexterity. ”

“ It seems to me that one trouble with our nut propaganda is that we go at it in such a way that the pupils regard us somewhat as "nuts," and why should the man who becomes a specialist on any subject, and airs it on all occasions, be called a nut? We shall have to admit that men are called such names. I think it is because we let our brains work somewhat like the oyster or clam, and secrete a hard shell of formal knowledge around the sweet meat of condensed human nature, for that is what all useful knowledge is. ”

“ On this night young people in the north of England dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle. This they do with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs. From the custom of flinging nuts into the fire, or cracking them with their teeth, it has likewise obtained the name of nutcrack night. In an ancient illuminated missal in Mr. Douce’s collection, a person is represented balancing himself upon a pole laid across two stools ”

“ I believe that women are just as competent as men to conduct any feature of nut culture, with the possible exception of specific manual labor. And I can think of no more delightful vocation for women who love the great and wonderful outdoors—and where is the woman who does not?—than nut culture, the cultivation of nut trees and bushes, beautiful things not only for the grace and beauty of trunk and limb, foliage and flower, but for their real substance, their fruit, nuts, one of the most nutritious foods for human beings. ”

“ Now we know that in the scramble, there passes in the children’s minds a great deal besides the mere sight and feel of the nuts, and the will to take and eat them. Between the sensation and action there takes place thought. To describe it simply, the boy knows a nut by sight, wishes to renew the pleasant taste of former nuts, and directs his hands and mouth to grasp, crack, and eat. ”

“ Only boys and their despairing mothers can know just how costly a Saturday afternoon nutting expedition can be, and why many a boy finds it expedient to come back with his bag of nuts in the late dusk. ”

“ I was talking to your secretary a few minutes in the hotel lobby this morning and he told me that while some of you were in the nut business with a majority of you it was a hobby. That is the altruistic spirit that counts in these days when most of us look upon things in a materialistic way.
There was a time when I thought that most nuts came from Brazil, but I am glad to learn that we grow the nuts we eat here in the good old U. S. A., and some right here in Pennsylvania and in Lancaster County. ”

“ There is a popular appeal to the nut business which most of us are susceptible to,—like wanting to produce large nuts,—and of seeing the first nut,—and to again gather nuts like we did as children. Ask a man how large a nut he found and he will lie as he will about a fish he has just caught.
Then, there is the romantic visionary who would transform the whole universe into a sort of fairyland nut grove—where there are no insects, diseases, or squirrels,—and where the nuts fall polished into open bags. ”

“ I will say in conclusion that I believe there are wonderful possibilities in Nut Culture in this country of ours. We know it is an established fact that nuts are entered into the dietary of our upwards of one hundred and ten million inhabitants of the United States of America more and more from day to day. ”

“ It bears the nuts when six or eight years old, after which period it is never seen without them; they grow usually six or eight on one stalk, which diverges from the heart of the tree; they are the size of a man’s head, but more conical. The nut, it is well known, when divested of its husk, is exceedingly hard, and requires a hammer to break it, or to be sawed through the middle to procure the nourishment it affords; when young, this consists of a white liquid, which I can compare to nothing better than to milk and water mixed with sugar, and which is an exceedingly cool and agreeable beverage ”

“ I am not to any extent a nut grower although I have nuts planted in my garden and hope that my heirs will reap the fruit of my trees. I went into the business rather too late. I have been so busy all my life that I did not have time to do some things. But I am very greatly interested in increasing the consumption of nuts. I have been popularizing the idea of nut consumption and making it a staple article of food for almost fifty years, and I have been continually faced with this objection that if we get all the people eating nuts there would not be enough nuts for them to eat. ”

“ Although only a nut culturist by proxy I have manifested a deep interest in this for many years, which is exemplified by the fact that on my different hunting trips, in which I have indulged for over thirty-five years, in the past twenty-five years I have also made it a point in the fall of the year, to have with me a large pocket full of such nuts as I thought would more easily come up and benefit some one in the future. ”

“ Having done this, it is proper that the congregation should be given a little breathing-time, and so the preacher takes the sentence, Dust thou art, and plays with it, by giving a description of dust agitated by the wind. Oh, into what fantastic shapes does the wind whirl the dust! how the dust-cloud runs along, rushes forward madly, stops and spins awhile, and tosses itself up, up, till it seems verily to fly; it ascends higher and higher, it is carried above the tree-tops, it will reach the clouds of Heaven. ”

“ In vain did cooks and old women throw out cock’s-heads divested of their combs, and the gizzards of ducks and fowls—in vain on the Saturday night was every gutter in the place made the receptacle of all the dust of all the houses—in vain were a number of other untidy tricks practiced to defile the highways, and offend the olfactories of the passing stranger—before the Monday morning all was clear again—except in very rainy seasons, when I have known a dust-heap lie for a fortnight. ”

“ But Orderlies are in sundry respects different, and, upon the whole, I recommend not to have night Orderlies, but to let each Orderly in turn do the night-duty.
23. It is important to remember—the more so as it is often forgotten—that to lay more upon human nature than its Maker has made it to bear, is to do a foolish, let alone a wicked thing. Upon an average, all men and women can dispense with, or abridge sleep for more or less time. Upon an average, all men and women, after a laborious day, require a good night, in the long run. ”

“ NUT FOODS. We are only beginning very slowly to recognise the valuable properties of nuts and their possibilities in the cuisine. Indeed, there is a rather deep-rooted prejudice against them as food, people having been so long accustomed to regard them as an unconsidered trifle to accompany the wine after a big dinner, and as in this connection they usually call up visions of dyspepsia, many people regard the idea of their bulking at all largely in a meal with undisguised horror. ”

“ He therefore wandered slowly through the forest, looking for some convenient and comfortable spot upon which he might deposit his huge carcase, and indulge in that after-dinner nap which is ordinarily so agreeable to persons of a certain age. In a giant’s case, such naps are almost always unnaturally long and deep, and in fact these vast beings have been known not unfrequently to sleep round from one dinnertime to another, when their repast has happened to be somewhat larger and more satisfactory to themselves than common. ”

“ I should like to know that; yes, I should like to know when a baby’s nap would be out. Haven’t you swept, and watered your plants, and made the bed, and seen to dinner, and taken out your crimps, and more? Pudding?—yes, now you want to make the pudding, and then the salad, and then the Washington pie, and then run out a minute. I know: don’t tell me. A baby’s nap is never out, never, never, so long as any thing is to be done. ”

“ Little Frank had been told to believe that we are all made of dust. One day, as he stood watching at the window, while a strong wind was whirling the dust into eddies, and hurrying it away into holes and corners, and there piling it up with the dried leaves, his mother asked him what he was thinking of. "O," said he, with uncommon seriousness for so young a philosopher, "I thought the dust looked as though there was going to be another little boy." ”

“ At seventy years of age I have become interested in nut growing—in nut culture. (Applause.) I am not planting particularly for myself, not that I expect to get any harvest from these trees, but I do want to see them bear fruit—bear nuts. I want to plant the right kind of trees. I have joined this Association; I intend to retain a membership in it as long as the Association lives. ”

“ Those of you here who have engaged in the various phases of nut culture may think these points primitive and unnecessary, and they are, perhaps, unnecessary to the expert, but it is my pleasure every summer to spend considerable time in the rural sections of the country, and it is surprising how very little is known, even by our most enlightened farmers, on the subject of nut culture. ”

“ For the first time since the exultant hope of her life was blasted, Clara shed tears.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SOUP-KITCHEN
With the first breath of winter there passes a voice half-menacing, half-mournful, through all the barren ways and phantom-haunted refuges of the nether world. Too quickly has vanished the brief season when the sky is clement, when a little food suffices, and the chances of earning that little are more numerous than at other times; this wind that gives utterance to its familiar warning is the vaunt-courier of cold and hunger and solicitude that knows not sleep. ”

“ I read a criticism the other day of a book that was published in which the reviewer said: "It is well for a man when he sits down to write a book that he know something of the topic on which he is going to write." I know very little about the possible nuts that may become commercially important in this section of the world. If it wasn't for the fact that when I come North here I like to meet some fellow nut, we wouldn't care very much whether you fellows ever discover a commercial nut in this part of the world or not, because the Lord has been so generous to you. ”

“ Now, I daresay you will have noticed that if you have to wait for your dinner till long after the proper time, and then eat a great deal more dinner than usual, and sit in the hot sun on the top of a church-tower - or even anywhere else - you become soon and strangely sleepy. Now Anthea and Jane and Cyril and Robert were very like you in many ways, and when they had eaten all they could, and drunk all there was, they became sleepy, strangely and soon - especially Anthea, because she had got up so early. ”