Corn Quotes
"It is not elegant to gnaw Indian corn. The kernels should be scored with a knife, scraped off into the plate, and then eaten with a fork. Ladies should be particularly careful how they manage so ticklish a dainty, lest the exhibition rub off a little desirable romance."
Charles Day, 1844
"...corn provided infant America with a backbone while it was developing the use of its legs. America was growing, quite literally, up the cornstalk."
Dorothy Giles, 'Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn'
"The greatest drawback is the way in which it is necessary to eat it.....It looks awkward enough: but what is to be done? Surrendering such a vegetable from considerations of grace is not to be thought of."
Harriet Martineau, an Englishwomen, on corn on the cob (1835).
"Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn."
Garrison Keillor
“Plough deep, while Sluggards sleep;
And you shall have Corn, to sell and to keep.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Poor Richard's Almanac
"Vindex Patriae, a writer in your paper, comforts himself, and the India Company, with the fancy, that the Americans, should they resolve to drink no more tea, can by no means keep that Resolution, their Indian corn not affording ‘an agreeable, or easy digestible breakfast.’ Pray let me, an American, inform the gentleman, who seems ignorant of the matter, that Indian corn, take it for all in all, is one of the most agreeable and wholesome grains in the world...and that johny or hoecake, hot from the fire, is better than a Yorkshire muffin...Mr Vindex's very civil letter will, I dare say, be printed in all our provincial news-papers...and together with the other kind, polite and humane epistles of your correspondents Pacificus, Tom Hint, etc. etc. contribute not a little to strengthen us in every resolution of advantage, to our country at least, if not yours."
Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to the London Gazetteer, 1/2/1766, during the controversy over the Stamp Act
"Some people take the whole stem, and gnaw [the kernels] out with their teeth: two gentlemen do so who sit opposite...myself at table, and whom we call 'the sharks,' because of their remarkable ability in gobbling up large and often double portions of everything which comes to table, and it really troubles me to see how their wide mouths ...ravenously grind up the beautiful white, pearly maize ears."
Fredrika Bremer, on a visit to America in 1850
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