"Hot Dog" in 1872?

[Gerald Cohen]

   My thanks to the ads-l researchers who are ferreting out early
attestations of "hot dog." I'll include these items (with due credit)
in the "hot dog" bibliography I'm currently compiling.

   Meanwhile, the material needs to be examined to see just what it tells us.

   I'll start with the following item:

    At 9:37 PM -0400 10/24/03, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>Subject:      "Hot Dog" in 1872?
>
>All right, get a load of this article found through American Periodical
>Series.  I can't believe this is really a usage of _hot dog_
>'frankfurter,' but the words "This is no sausage shop" could be read to
>mean that the speaker is referring to a "cold dog" or "hot dog" or
>"lukewarm dog" as a sausage.  At the least this could be considered to be
>a usage of _dog_ 'sausage'.
>
>1872 _Saturday Evening Post_ 27 July 8
>Organist (angrily) -- I called to get Martini's Ecole d'Orgue.  I see it
>advertised, and I want it.  Now, have you got that Ecole d'Orgue or not?
>If you have, run it out, for I'm in a hurry.
>Salesman -- You must take me for a fool, don't you?  This is no sausage
>shop.  This is a music store.  What do you suppose we know about Martini's
>cold dog, or his hot dog, or his lukewarm dog, or any other dog belonging
>to any other man?  You must be crazy.  We don't deal in dogs.  Martini
>never left his dog around here anywhere.  Why, you talk like a --
>(suddenly calling to his fellow clerk) -- I say John here's a demented old
>idiot in here wanting to buy some kind of an Italian cold dog.
>
>Fred Shapiro

   IMHO, we do not deal here with an early usage of "dog" (= sausage)
but rather with the popular 19th century belief that dog-meat turns
up at least occasionally in sausages. In other words, there's no
evidence prior to college slang of 1895 of anyone eating a sausage
and referring to it as a "dog" or "hot dog."

  French Ecole d'Orgue (Organ School) of course sounds roughly like
English A [rhymes with MAY} COL[D] DOG. So when the non-French
speaking music salesman hears that the customer wants A COLD DOG, he
obviously thinks of a dead dog soon to be turned into sausages. Hence
the salesman's indignant: "This is no sausage shop. This is a music
store....You must be crazy..."  This doesn't make for an early
attestation of "dog" (= sausage); it constitutes only one more piece
of evidence (in an already considerable collection) of dogs being
viewed as about to be turned into sausages.

    Here are a few more illustrations taken from Barry Popik's research:

1844 -- Boston Post, Oct. 30, 1844, p. 2, col. 2:
        'Dog cheap -- Sausages at six cents a pound.'

1846 -- New York Globe, Aug. 22, 1846, p. 2, col. 4:
        '"Hog or dog! -- that's the question," as the fellow said
when he sat     down to a dish of fried sausages.'

Gerald Cohen

P.S. The more I read the Ecole d'Orgue joke, the more I appreciate it.