[Ads-l] cut the mustard

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Little Joe from Kokomo" is the way I learned it.

JL

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: cut the mustard
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 12:57 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Website: Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog
> > Date: May 5, 2014
> > Article: History and Etymology of "Cut the Mustard" - Locusts, Bad
> > Seeds, Invasive Species and Politics
> >
> >
> http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/05/history-and-etymology-of-cut-mustard.html
> >
>
> An interesting read, as is much else on the site: "Little Joe from Chicago"
> = 4 [foU]. But, I find one usage confusing.
>
> "In
>  _an unintended result that goes to prove the old adage that no good deed
> goes unpunished_,
> twenty years after the grasshopper plagues, the Minneapolis (Minnesota)
> Journal reported that:
>
> Some nineteen or twenty years ago there was a failure of crops on account
> of hail and grasshoppers for two or three successive years, until there was
> no seed in the country.  All the seed grain used the following spring along
> the Omaha road and the whole surrounding country was shipped in from the
> East by one company.  This seed contained mustard.  From that time until
> now it has grown worse and worse."
>
> I've long been under the impression that it's the *doer* of the good deed
> who is punished and not the *recipient* of it. But,
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



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