With unrestrained enthusiasm, the New York Atlas announced on June 20, 1858:

The lion is caught! We have at length succeeded in securing, as a regular contributor to the Atlas, the author of the famous and unapproachably humorous "Sut Lovingoods Letters," which he will hereafter contribute exclusively to our columns. . . . We are not authorized to give the author’s Simon Pure name; but he writes us from the Great West, under the date June 11: "I will forward you a ‘Sut’ in a few days and hope thereafter, to be a regular contributor to the Atlas."¹

The author was, of course, George Washington Harris, writing from Tennessee.

Three stories dealing with Sut Lovingood have previously been identified as Harris’s work in the Atlas, "Sut Lovengood Escapes Assasination," July 11, "Sut Lovengood’s Adventures in New York," August 8, and "Sut Lovengood at Bull’s Gap," November 28, 1858,² with the belief that these made up his total contribution. A careful review of the newspaper file in the Library of the American Antiquararian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, discloses, however, that Harris wrote five additional anecdotes or short tales for this Atlas series: "The Cockney’s Baggage," January 9, 1859; "She Had the Slows" and an untitled locomotive anecdote, February 9, 1859; "How to Gain Your Seed Oats" and "A Strange Breed of Cats," February 20, 1859.

Of this group, "The Cockney’s Baggage" and the untitled locomotive anecdote have been a recognized part of the Harris canon since they appeared in M. Thomas Inge’s High Times and Hard Times: Sketches and Tales by George Washington Harris, a collection including all of Harris’s known writings uncollected during his lifetime. The texts of these two items in the Inge volume were from other New York publications which had apparently copied them from the Atlas, making only slight alterations.³

The three new items are the words and work of writer Harris, not the adventures of Sut, a fact which will disappoint Sut’s numerous fans. These items are important, however, because they show Harris experimenting with language—one is about a stutterer, one uses Irish brogue—and creating a new kind of "varmint" in his generic "hoss" species. Further it appears that these are the last instances of Harris putting anything into prose print without the involvement of Sut as a

part of the action. Consequently, they need to be available for scholars working with Harris and southwestern humor.

One other point concerning this series should be made. On September 5, 1858, a short notice in the Atlas announced: "‘Coved in and Done.’—Through the Athens, Tennessee Banner, we have received the intelligence of the death of ‘Sut Lovengood,’ the hero of the Lovengood Papers." The piece went on to reprint the obituary of William S. Miller, who had provided Harris with the original characterization of Sut.⁴ "So, then" the Atlas continued, "this is the end all and the be all of a ‘nat’ral born dern’d fool,’ and his close of life was in keeping with its morn and noon. Poor Sut has ‘gin in and can never ‘play hoss’ with his father, or peel off his bark through the scuttlehole of a shanty. Well, well, we wish we owned a lock of his hair, or that shirt. But what has become of his confessor? Has he ‘cove in,’ too?"

Harris, "the confessor," did respond, sending "Sut Lovengood at Bull’s Gap," published on November 28, 1858. One might speculate that the death of the "real Sut" may have been responsible for this hiatus in Harris’s writing, for apparently the Atlas editor had expected at least a monthly contribution from Harris. Perhaps the author himself was experiencing a sort of metamorphosis with the old characters of Sut and George subtly moving into a single focus in his mind. Certainly most—if not all—of the stories after the Bull’s Gap saga would be of a heavier political satire than anything with which the original Sut pattern—the loose panther-streak mountaineer—could have been realistically associated. Could it be that we witness in this Atlas series George Washington Harris becoming totally Sut Lovengood?

*****

"She Had the Slows"⁵

The author of Sut Lovengood writes to the ATLAS as follows:

I have an acquaintance, "B-B-Bob" by name, who stutters "just that way," and he revels greatly in the possession of a fat, good-natured lazy wife. Indolently devout, being too inert to be wicked, Bob’s wife indulges in, and enjoys, a passive sort of heavenly-mindedness, much to the annoyance of Bob, who not being given to godliness much, swears awfully at his late breakfasts, his buttonless shirts and unmade bed; and generally winds up his tirade by an unholy opinion delivered as the "rattle staff" of a mill delivers corn to the stones, by jerks. "S-s-she h-h-has g-got the s-s-slows d-d-dam b-b-bad; if-if-if t-t-they s-strike in t-t-they’ll k-kill her in-in-in a m-m-minute." Well, one morning, when she was slowly emerging from her chamber, half-awake and half-clad, she spied Bob with legs crossed and specks astride his nose, most

solemnly turning over the leaves of the family bible, licking his thumb for each leaf turned. This being the first time she had ever seen her husband thus engaged, it astonished her into something like a state of semi-vitality.

Bob, without raising his head, or even suspending the thumb-licking process, says, "I-I-I’m j-jist 1-lookin’ to s-s-see if it it it s-says a-any t-thing a-about G-G-Ga-Gabriel’s b-b-blowin’ a-a p-p-preparatory h-h-horn, t-the d-day a-fore j-j-judgment f-for if if h-he d-d-don’t, if if e-e-ever your r-resurrected I-I-I’l be darned."

*****

[Written for the New York Atlas]⁶

HUMOROUS TRIFLES
By the Author of Sut Lovingood
How To GAIN YOUR SEED OATS

Dennis was a farmer and Mickey a village mechanic, and both children of Erin, the land of the "dudeen and shilelah." Mickey had a few days previously purchased a load of sheaf oats of Dennis, and he was in the village again with another load already engaged to a "blatherin spalpeen ove an American," when he met his friend Mickey, and after drying the bottom of a whiskey "noggin" thus they discoursed:

Dennis, confidentially—"I’ll tell yees, Mickey, it don’t do shafe oats a divil of a bt ove harem tu swaat ’em a few bats ovethr the idge ove a imty barethl es yees a loadin’ ove ’em, an’ the dhryer the wither the bether; yees’l hey good sade oats chape while shafe oats sills by the dozin bundles, an aint weighted."

Mickey, (astonished and riled,)—"Oh the divil thurn yer buthermil intu sthrong——, ye baste ove a mon, dye mane tu say yees swaated my oats my ovethr yer ould imty barethl? Say so, yee spalpeen, ’n’ I’ll lind yees a spaldeen ovethr yer ugly eye sthrong es a mule a keckin, an’ I will, ye dhirty son ove a hanged tenker."

Dennis, (soothingly,)—"Now don’t be afther makin’ ove a jickarse ove yerself intirely. D’ye think I’m mane enuf tu swaat oats fur a Kilkeney mon? No, divil the bet ove it; I only swaats ’em fur the haythen."

This explanation made "all right" between them, as was proven by another "noggin." Not bad for Dennis, even had he been educated where the trees bear wooden clocks and codfish is called beef.

A STRANGE BREED OF CATS

A green Hoozier, who had followed a bacon wagon from Tennessee,

found himself for the first time in Augusta, Georgia, and in pursuit of a fresh supply of "tangle leg whiskey." He slowly (as a coon approached a trap) entered a highly decorated saloon after much misgiving and hesitation, the premonitory chills of a "big skeer" chasing each other in rapid succession down his back, and modestly ventured to ask the attendant to fill his jug. While this was being done he chanced to raise his head, and his eyes fell on a three foot by seven mirror behind the counter, in which he was fairly reflected; but he did not begin to know himself. Behind him, on the wall, was a fine, large painting of a royal Bengal tiger in the attitude ready to spring forward. He instantly dodged aside, shouting as he went: "Run, run you cussed infurnal ugly fool, thar’s a striped boar cat es big as a yearlin a fixin tu kiver you!" Pale and trembling he strode to where the bar-keeper was filling the jug: "Say, you gin me that ar jug es hit is, empty or full, an run an shet that ar dure (pointing to the mirror) durn quick, ef you dont want yer glass truck ground up an yer haslett tore outen you, for thars H–Il tu pay in that ar back room!" Seeing the whiskey seller rather slow in his motions to suit his hurry, he put for the street with eyes stuck out and hair erect, saying as he left: "Durned ef that feller dont have sasidge meat to sell soon, ef his life’s spared." "Well—I’ve seed cats—hearn ove cats—all sorts ove cats, wild cats, sow cats and stink cats, but—oh my soul! sich a cat! Here he stole a suspicious, sly look back at the house and shook and scratched his head. "I wonder ef that ar breed ove hoss cats am plenty round here? Say, mister, how fur is hit tu the Tennessee line?" He beat the wagon back to Tennessee six days and the United States mail two. And he is telling his grand children to-night about the "orful hoss cats they keeps runnin round loose at Augusty es big as yearlins," and ventures an opinion how they procure "thar yeathen war" and "sassidge "meat, "by skarin smart folks away frum thar jugs an letting the cats chop up the durned fools," and wonders how Augusta manages to hold her own in population, considering the latitude the "Hoss cats" have.

NOTES

   ¹XIX, 4.
    ²Reprinted in The Lovingood Papers (Athens, Tennessee: The Sut Society, 1962), pp. 36–46, and The Lovingood papers (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1964), pp. 10–12; and also in High Times and Hard Times: Sketches and Tales by George Washington Harris, ed. M. Thomas Inge (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), pp. 126–156. Not until the publication of Sut Lovingood Yarns . . . (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1867) would the spelling of Sut’s last name be standardized.
    ³"The Cockney’s Baggage," Inge, p. 77, is quoted as beginning: "Sut Lovingood sends the following to an exchange." The Atlas copy begins: "Sut Lovingood sends us the following." The Atlas copy does not contain the concluding sentence in Inge, p. 78, referring to a "London Times Georgia railroad

story." Also, "Blamed" in Inge, pp.77, line 17, reads "d–d" in the Atlas; "Deuced" in Inge, p.78, line 2, reads "d–d."

In "Sut Lovingood and the Locomotive," lnge, p. 156, several phonetic renderings have been changed to standard spellings. "Deuce" in line 9 is "h–1" in the Atlas; "brute" in line 15 is "b–h," further mixing the metaphor.
    ⁴Quoted in my "The Real Sut," American Literature, 27 (March 1955), 105–106.
    ⁵Atlas, February 6, 1859, p. 4.
    ⁶Atlas, February 20, 1859, p. 3 Harris’s work appeared at least once again in this newspaper. "Sut Lovingood’s Hark from the Tomb Story" (See Inge, pp. 101–104), with "Sut" removed, appeared anonymously as "The Brakeman" in the Atlas, April 18, 1868, p. 6, approximately a month after its initial appearance in the Chattanooga Daily American Union, March 17, 1868.