Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
On election days the country people would bring in gingercakes made of cane-molasses, bread homemade of Burr flour and moonshine and apple-jack which the candidates would buy and distribute through the crowd. And always during the afternoon there were men who would try to prove themselves the best Democrats in the State of Virginia by resort to tooth, fist and eye-gouging thumb.
"But Sam Riley's got blood in him, the best blood in Alabammy, and he kin tell you all about it if yer want ter know. He kin stan' up agin a whole bottle o' apple-jack."
The indignant owner said: 'You infernal hog, why did you drink up all my apple-jack? His friend answered: 'I beg your pardon, Job, but I could not bite off the tap, because I have lost all my teeth." The aptness of the story was the success of the evening. Some years afterwards there was a meeting of the alumni to form a live association.
Here were the muster-days of wartime. Here on Saturdays the people had come together during half a century for sport and horse-trading and to talk politics. Here they drank apple-jack and hard cider, chaffed and quarrelled and fought fist and skull. Here the bullies of the two counties would come together to decide who was the "best man."
O, I know you of old, Mr. Kent Edwards," continued Abe, with that deep sarcasm, which was his nearest approach to humor. "I may say that I've had the advantages of an intimate acquaintance with you for years, and when I trust you with a full canteen of apple-jack at the beginning of such a march as this'll be, I'll be ready to enlist in the permanent garrison of a lunatic asylum, I will.
"Is it possible that you drink apple-jack?" asked the mate, with some observations on the folly of drinking liquor. "Drink it when I git it, sar." "Where did you get your apple-jack?" "At de saloon; where else would I get it, sar?" "I suppose it made you so boozy you don't know where the saloon was," added the mate, keeping up his indifference, as though his talk was mere banter.
And his pies is deadlier'n his apple-jack. A man kin git over an apple-jack drunk, but Kentucky pies 's wuss'n nux vomica on fish." "Mustn't we eat none o' their pies?" asked the boys, with longing remembrance of the fragrant products of their mothers' ovens. "Nary a pie. If I ketch a boy eatin' a pie after we cross the river I'll buck-and-gag him. Stick to plain hardtack and pork.
The keenly watchful eyes of Burgin had noted the arrival of that apple-jack at the island; and they had closely followed its fortunes, from first to last. He had more than half tried, indeed, to work himself in among the crowd, as one of the "sufferers," but with no manner of success. The officers of the ship knew every face that had any right to a spoonful, and Burgin's failed to pass him.
He gave a verse of it, a wild, sad thing, with tears in it and the joy of battle. After that we all sang, all but me, who have no voice. Bertrand had a lay of Normandy, about a lady who walked in the apple-orchards and fell in love with a wandering minstrel; and Donaldson sang a rough ballad of Virginia, in which a man weighs the worth of his wife against a tankard of apple-jack.
Captain Sullendine remarked with great complacency that he always treated his men well, gave them enough to eat and drink, and he thought the apple-jack he had sent them would do them good. He liked to be liberal with his crew, for he believed a tot of grog would go further with them than "cussin' 'em;" and the two mates did not gainsay him, though they believed in neither grog nor "cussin'."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking