chili-non-carne?

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

OFF TOPIC:  My phone service is back!  Lordy!

CHILI-NON-CARNE:  That's how it was.  I didn't know if it was a typo or a joke...It was also "Cuba libra," which makes it easy to order a drink and ask "What's your sign?"

   On page 36 of JOURNALISTS' LETTERS (1888) was this poem, which Fred Shapiro has probably dated:

"If you ever go to France,
   Be sure to learn the Lingo;
If you do like me,
   You'll repent, by jingo."

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ST. LOUIS' ISLE, OR TEXIANA
by Charles Hooton
Simmonds and Ward, London
1847

Pg. 129:
   *This is the usual method of drinking in Texas and the Southern States,--spirits first and water afterward.

Pg. 24:  "acclimated"*
*This word is not in the dictionaries; but as it is both useful and expressive of its meaning (_accustomed to the climate_), I have not hesitated to adopt it.
(OED has one earlier cite--ed.)

Pg. 166:
   The phrase "people of colour" is peculiarly apt in this place (New Orleans--ed.), as a perfect black, an unmitigated "nigger," is somewhat of a rarity.

Pg. 170:  ..."chicken fixen"...