The connection of the one with the other is not obvious; but the phrases in which the words occur explain themselves. A variation will be noticed, 1836.
1833. We must make a straight wake behind us; for if the horn [broad-horn] gets broadside to the current, I wouldn’t risk a huckleberry to a persimmon that we don’t every soul get treed, and sink to the bottom, like gone suckers.—J. K. Paulding, ‘The Banks of the Ohio,’ i. 139–40 (Lond.).
1833. It’s a disgraceful shot,—what I call a full huckleberry below a persimmon.—Id., ii. 62.
1836. It is a huckleberry above my persimmon to cipher out how it is with six months’ schooling only, I, David Crokett, find myself the most popular bookmaker of the day; and such is the demand for my works that I cannot write them half fast enough, no how I can fix it.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 13.
1836. One of the nominees for the ermine was a hickory over any body’s persimmon in the way of ugliness.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., pp. 16–7 (1846).
1844. She’s a great gal that! Show me another like her any whar, and I am thar directly. She’s a huckleberry above most people’s parsimmons.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Aug. 24.
1855. [This] was, in western parlance, “a huckleberry above his persimmon.”—W. G. Simms, ‘Border Beagles,’ p. 308 (N.Y.).
1856. My l’arning, that hay, ain’t a huckleberry to your persimmon.—The same, ‘Eutaw,’ p. 553 (N.Y.).
1885. I’m a huckleberry above that persimmon, ’cause I’m the chief cook of the Mississippi Squadron, an’ you can’t come any of yer chief surgeon over me.—Admiral D. D. Porter, ‘Incidents of the Civil War,’ p. 204.
