Georges Township High School - Georgian Yearbook (Uniontown, PA)

Page 95 text:

when Tom Jenkins, a well-known teamster, came lumbering along in his Conestoga, He knew the burgess, and, taking a sudden pity on him, halted his horses, jumped off from his wagon and stumped up the steps to have a word with him, but also to save him from the avalanche of adjuration. Giving no heed to the hints and signs, he offered one of his stogies to the burgess -the first the old man had ever seen. Flint and steel were pulled out, a light was struck, and the two began to smoke, while the elder grew in deeper earnest and shouted louder and louder in warning and expostulation. The stogie seemed to have medicinal qualities, for soon the burgess began to find his tongue in the old way, and he loosed a torrent of profane objur- gation that made his tormentor stand aghast. Then he quoted : And the ministering angel-the angel, damme !-flew up to heaven-to heaven, you blink, blank son-o-a-sea-cook-with the oath-and blushed as he gave it in. He shouted this, his memory coming back to him. But the record- ing angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out, forever. F'ever, sir ! he roared, as the elder hurried down the steps, holding his hands to his ears and raising his eyes in despair. Then, turning to the teamster, the burgess said, looking significantly at the roll of tobacco he held in his fingers : Tom, you've brought back my Uncle Toby. And the name of toby fastened upon the cigar that day. -AMERICAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS. EEE? 93

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WHEELING STOGIES ---:-ooo-:--- In Wheeling, West Virginia, they make a cheap cigar, called the stogy. Similar offenders are made in Pittsburgh, Pa., one variety of which is known as the Toby. These long, thin bunches of tobacco are hastily put together, native leaf and leavings being used in the making. They are alleged by experts to be not more than half as bad as they look-and smell. The name stogy came about in this way : Before the days of canals and railroads all freight had to be sent from the coast cities to what was then called the West in big, canvas-topped wagons known-from the place of their manufacture-as Conestogas. The teamsters were willing to take a part of their pay in tobacco, out of which they fashioned a rough likeness to a cigar that became known as a Conestoga. That name was too long, so they called it a stoga, and this got itself twisted into stogie by the tavern idlers to whom the carters gave the rolls of leaf. The tale of the Pittsburgh toby sounds less likely, but its origin has become a town tradition, so here it is, for what it is Worth. When'that city was a village, and a good, blue Presbyterian one, a certain burgess suffered wide renown as a swearer. Every time he was taken to task for his temper and profanity he would quite the passage from his favorite Tristam Shandy' in which Uncle Toby said a bad word, which a guardian spirit took straight to heaven-a wrong place to take such words, for though the recording angel entered it on the great book, he dropped a tear that blotted it out forever. As the burgess grew old his memory became uncertain, and it troubled him not a little to be compelled to get his book from the shelf when he wanted to repeat a paragraph that had been so familiar as his own name. Deep was his sorrow when some unconscionable reformer ran off with Tristam Shandyj' leaving the old man to gasp and glare and stammer when he tried to frame his usual excuse. They did say that a church elder took the book, in order that the burgess should have no support in his sin. This elder-at least, an elder-began an earnest effort for the burgess' re- form, and he was at it one day, preaching ,arguing, gesticulationg, while his victim sat on his porch, hunched in his chair, his eyes roving sadly and his fingers working in the vain attempt to recall his defensive quotation, 92'

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1.RT AUTOGRAPHS 94