"[all] found"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sun May 15 01:55:24 UTC 2011


At 5/14/2011 03:17 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>...
>Not so murky thoughts:
>1) Here we have a newspaper quoting from the steamboat ads which
>offered passage up the Hudson to Albany for "$1 and found", meaning
>with a meal included in the fare:
>         Cheap Travelling. -- Cheap enough, and cheap do they feel
> who travel about these days.  "One dollar and found," or rather one
> dollar and lost; for one can neither keep his trunk nor his
> senses.  Job must have written his third and fourth chapters after
> having travelled in a North river steamboat.  Only fancy four
> hundred and fifty Christian men, women, brats and bandboxes, all
> crammed into one boat, puffing, squalling, scolding and fighting
> for their "found;" which said word, being interpreted, meaneth
> bread, potatoes, pig, beef, and brandy.

Is not "found" a noun here?

>Such a crowd, in so small a space, does away with all individuality
>-- a man does not know whether he is himself or something else: "Me
>and the he-goat," says Billy Lackaday, "did'nt know which was
>which."  All that a "one dollar and found" man knows, is that he is
>part of a great many-headed monster, compared with which the Siamese
>boys are nothing at all.  We saw a woman toss off a stiff glass of
>brandy and water at one gulp, !
>  and smack her lips like a Kentucky stage-driver.  She evidently
> mistook herself for the red-nosed old reprobate who sat beside
> her.  However, she got a glass of grog by the mistake.
>[This rant goes on for several more paragraphs.  There was a price
>war going on at the time.]
>Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, November 17, 1829, p. 2, col. 1
>
>...
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
>Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>Date: Saturday, May 14, 2011 10:58 am
>Subject: "[all] found"
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > It was a chore to find "found" = "room and board" in the OED.  It's
> > under "find, v." (Sept. 2010), sense 18.a., as "all found (also,
> > chiefly U.S., simply found) (in regard to servants): with all
> > customary articles of food, etc., provided."  (I ingeniously thought
> > to look for the phrase "dollars and found", and found exactly one
> quotation.)
> >
> > Should the "U.S., simply found" be given its own entry, as "found",
> > presumably a "n."?  (And some given "found" these days would resent
> > being classed as "servants".)
> >
> > Joel

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