Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things

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I shall start immegiately, and if i kan only rescue mi pup before he gits contaminated, I shall be az proud az a rooster. In haste, good bye.

    Josh Billings.

XIX.

SUM VEGETABEL HISTORY

The strawberry is one ov natur's sweet pets.

She makes them worth fifty cents, the fust she makes, and never allows them tew be sold at a mean price.

The culler ov the strawberry iz like the setting sun under a thin cloud, with a delicate dash of the rain bo in it; its fragrance iz like the breath ov a baby, when it fust begins tew eat wintergreen lossingers; its flavor is like the nektar which an old-fashioned goddess used tew leave in the bottom ov her tumbler, when Jupiter stood treat on Mount Ida.

There iz menny breeds ov this delightful vegetable, but not a mean one in the whole lot.

I think i have stole them, laying around loose, without enny pedigree, in sumboddy's tall grass, when I waz a lazy schoolboy, that eat dredful easy, without enny white sugar on them, and even a bug occasionally mixed with them in the hurry of the moment. Cherrys are good, but they are too mutch like sucking a marble, with a handle tew it. Peaches are good, if yu don't git enny ov the pin-feathers into yure lips. Watermelons will suit ennyboddy who iz satisfied with half-sweetened drink; but the man who can eat strawberrys, besprinkled with crushed shuggar, and besmattered with sweet cream (at sumboddy else's expense), and not lay hiz hand on hiz stummuk, and thank the author ov strawberrys and stummuks, and the phellow who pays for the strawberrys, iz a man with a worn-out conscience – a man whose mouth tastes like a hole in the ground, that don't care what goes down it.

Kokernuts grow up in the air, in a hot climate way over the ocean, about 80 feet from the ground – on the top ov a tree.

They are generally picked bi the monkeys in that naborhood, who throw them at the natives, in exchange for the stones that the natives heave at the monkeys.