EDITORIAL 



59 



Are you afraid to go into a grave- 

 yard and stay there alone at night f 

 your reason tells you that it is only the 

 sleeping place of your friends, and thus 

 to revere their memory should be a 

 joy, but somehow you or some of your 

 progenitors have absorbed the spirit 

 of that custard pie. You have been 

 frightened by the unknown. You are 

 terrified not only by the surrounding- 

 darkness, but by the thought of the 

 untraveled road that each of us must 

 tread. Your reason tells you that it 

 should be a delight to enter into new 

 scenes and unfamiliar places, to enter 

 into those joys that the eye hath not 

 seen nor hath it entered into the heart of 

 man to imagine, yet you shudder at the 

 thought of that unknown region. Yes, 

 but unreasonably so. There is really 

 nothing to fear except one's self. In 

 the darkness where reason tells us 

 there is no enemy nor any lurking dan- 

 ger, yet somehow, because of danger 

 in the past and present of the humai: 

 race, there is the feeling of dread that 

 requires much force of will to over- 

 come. 



As I grow older, my reason and the 

 delicious qualities of good custard pie 

 have taken much of that dread from 

 my mind, but I wonder how mu:i- 

 older I must be, and how much longer 

 experience must influence the human 

 race before reason and love will wholly 

 annihilate the dread. Afraid in the 

 woods? Afraid in the cemetery? Oh, 

 for a greater love to drive out the fear 

 of things that we should wholly enjoy. 

 Yes, my friend, you have eaten sour 

 custard pie, and some of the happiness 

 of your life has been destroyed. Strug- 

 gle with all your powers so that all 

 the world shall have less dread, less 

 ugliness, less enmity, and a better era 

 of peace and serenity, of loveliness and 

 beautv, shall be ushered in. 



In Memoriam Hominum! 



Though some of our Latin scholars 

 may criticise the syntax of that ex- 

 pression they must admit that it recalls 

 at least a suggestion of something in 

 memory of men, but I want to play up- 

 on the word and sing, like Virgil of old, 

 in memory of mankind's once familiar 

 hominy. In all the cornfields, in all the 

 gristmills, in all the kitchens, hominy 

 is only a memory to the older mem1:)ers 



oj mankind. During a correspondence 

 extending over more than three years 

 in all parts of the country in search of 

 this lost hominy I have yet to find the 

 first particle of the real thing. I have 

 been deluged with letters telling of in- 

 numerable places where one might ob- 

 tain hominy, and into these places I 

 have chased the fleeing will-'o-the- 

 wisp, only to find something entirely 

 different — what every New England 

 boy knew^ half a century ago as hulled 

 corn, or the monstrosity that any self- 

 respecting New England boy would 

 have been ashamed to know, a pale- 

 faced, blanched, Japanese-like form of 

 corn, known as hominy grits. Now it 

 is neither hulled corn nor this so-called 

 hominy grits the loss of wdiicli I am 

 deploring, but real hominy from yellow 

 corn. 



Good old Noah Webster, and I have 

 no doubt that Daniel too, knew what 

 hominy was, knew that the original 

 w^as common yellow, Indian corn brok- 

 en by the Indians. Of course when 

 they pounded it with a pestle in the 

 hollow of a stone, their breaking was 

 somewhat irregular. The white man 

 improved upon that. He broke the 

 grains bv nlacing the gristmill stones 

 far apart and then sifted out the soft, 

 mealy portion by some process not 

 known to the writer. The thin skin 

 covering the corn was removable. 

 Goo'l old V.'ebster tells us that the 

 word itself is closely associated with 

 the term "rokohamin" used in Virginia, 

 but the Virginians parched the corn 

 before they pounded it. It seems that 

 there was a variety of processes but 

 the process that produced the real ma- 

 terial, dear to the heart of every New^ 

 Englander, is unfortunately no more or 

 is beyond the researches of my three 

 years' correspondence. 



After something like a year's corres- 

 pondence, an aged miller promised that 

 if he could ever find the spare time he 

 would grind a bushel of the real old 

 stuff. I waited for six months and then 

 wrote inquiring if he were not almost 

 ready to find the time, but a marked 

 copy of a paper mailed to me by one 

 of his relatives told me that he had 

 passed on beyond time. 



There w^as another miller in the east- 

 ern part of Connecticut Oh, yes, he 

 knows all about it and just as soon as 

 he can complete repairs on the erist- 

 niill he will supply all I need. For a 



