poptimists | PIES KILL US (Reply)

"We cry for pie when we are infants. Pie in countless varieties waits upon us through life. Pie kills us finally. We have apple-pie, peach-pie, rhubarb-pie, cherry-pie, pumpkin-pie, plum-pie, custard-pie, oyster-pie, lemon-pie and hosts of other pies. Potatoes are diverted from their proper place as boiled or baked, and made into a nice heavy crust to these pies, rendering them as incapable of being acting upon by the gastric juice as if they were sulphate of baryta, a chemical which boiling vitriol will hardly dissolve. Life is short, and we have no time to waste in eating. Thus our tables become railway-station counters, and we devour our food as if the conductor were outside ready to cry 'All aboard!' We enjoy less than any other people. We have no time for even our pleasures. Pie is at the bottom of all this nervous unrest."

An unnamed correspondent in Harper's, 1866. As quoted in Michael and Ariane Batterberry's On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution