are hardly acquainted with the word _husk_ as applied to the envelope of
the ear. _Husk_, in the Middle States, and in some parts of the South
and West, means the bran of the cornmeal, as notably in Davy Crockett's
verse:

"She sifted the meal, she gimme the hus';
She baked the bread, she gimme the crus';
She b'iled the meat, she gimme the bone;
She gimme a kick and sent me home."

In parts of Virginia, before the war, the word _husk_ or _hus'_ meant
the cob or spike of the corn. "I smack you over wid a cawn-hus'" is a
threat I have often heard one negro boy make to another. _Cob_ is
provincial English for ear, and I have known "a cob of corn" used in
Canada for an ear of Indian corn. While writing this note "a cob of
Indian corn "--meaning an ear--appears in the report of an address by a
distinguished man at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society.
A lady tells me that she met, in the book of an English traveller, the
remarkable statement that "the Americans are very fond of the young
grain called cob." These Indian-corn words have reached an accepted
meaning after a competition. To _shell_ corn, among the earliest
settlers of Virginia, meant to take it out of the envelope, which was
presumably called the shell. The analogy is with the shelling of pulse.]




CHAPTER III.

MIRANDY, HANK, AND SHOCKY.