Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have
turned out so differently! If Ravaillac had not been imprisoned for
debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre. If William of Orange
had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if France had followed
the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, as it came very
near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; if the Continental
ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; if Blucher had not “come
up” at Waterloo,--the lesson is, that things do not come up unless they
are planted. When you go behind the historical scenery, you find there
is a rope and pulley to effect every transformation which has astonished
you. It was the rascality of a minister and a contractor five years
before that lost the battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless
ammunition. I should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits
of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love
of woman than by the hate of man. It is only because we are ill informed
that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed because we expect
that for which we have not provided.
I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. A
garden ought to produce one everything,--just as a business ought to
support a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a convention
lately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't. There
has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seems to me
there is very little to show for it. It has been a terrible campaign;
but where is the indemnity? Where are all “sass” and Lorraine? It is
true that we have lived on the country; but we desire, besides, the
fruits of the war. There are no onions, for one thing. I am quite
ashamed to take people into my garden, and have them notice the absence
of onions. It is very marked. In onion is strength; and a garden without
it lacks flavor. The onion in its satin wrappings is among the most
beautiful of vegetables; and it is the only one that represents the
essence of things. It can almost be said to have a soul. You take off
coat after coat, and the onion is still there; and, when the last one is
removed, who dare say that the onion itself is destroyed, though you can
weep over its departed spirit? If there is any one thing on this fallen
earth that the angels in heaven weep over--more than another, it is the
onion.
I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion; but I
think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not that all
men and women love the onion; but few confess their love. Affection for
it is concealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy of owning it as they
are of talking about religion. Some people have days on which they eat
onions,--what you might call “retreats,” or their “Thursdays.” The act
is in the nature of a religious ceremony, an Eleusinian mystery; not a
breath of it must get abroad. On that day they see no company; they
deny the kiss of greeting to the dearest friend; they retire within
themselves, and hold communion with one of the most pungent and
penetrating manifestations of the moral vegetable world. Happy is said
to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time
being, separate from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. There
is a hint here for the reformers. Let them become apostles of the onion;
let them eat, and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it
in the form of seeds. In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood.
If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into a universal
sympathy. Look at Italy. I hope I am not mistaken as to the cause of her
unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospel which made it possible.
All the Reds of Europe, all the sworn devotees of the mystic Mary Ann,
eat of the common vegetable. Their oaths are strong with it. It is the
food, also, of the common people of Italy. All the social atmosphere of
that delicious land is laden with it. Its odor is a practical democracy.
In the churches all are alike: there is one faith, one smell. The
entrance of Victor Emanuel into Rome is only the pompous proclamation of
a unity which garlic had already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of
our democracy, eat onions in secret.
I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements. Neither
onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here. I have never seen a
garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbage in it; but my
garden gives the impression of a garden without a head. The cabbage is
the rose of Holland. I admire the force by which it compacts its crisp
leaves into a solid head. The secret of it would be priceless to the
world. We should see less expansive foreheads with nothing within.
Even the largest cabbages are not always the best. But I mention these
things, not from any sympathy I have with the vegetables named, but
to show how hard it is to go contrary to the expectations of society.
Society expects every man to have certain things in his garden. Not to
raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. Perhaps we shall come
some day to free churches and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor
through my tired garden, at the end of the season, when skies are
overcast, and brown leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does
raise his eyebrows when he observes, “Ah! I see you have none of this,
and of that.” At present we want the moral courage to plant only what
we need; to spend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is
going on over the fence. We are half ruined by conformity; but we should
be wholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden next
year that will be as popular as possible.
And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life. I begin
to feel the temptation of experiment. Agriculture, horticulture,
floriculture,--these are vast fields, into which one may wander away,
and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, this
gardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinite
possibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, “I wish you
would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me, when you
are in town.” Time was, I used to accept such a commission with alacrity
and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked one of his young men,
with easy indifference, to give me some of that. The young man, who is
as handsome a young man as ever I looked at, and who appears to own the
shop, and whose suave superciliousness would be worth everything to a
cabinet minister who wanted to repel applicants for place, says, “I have
n't an ounce: I have sent to Paris, and I expect it every day. I have
a good deal of difficulty in getting that shade in my assortment.” To
think that he is in communication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia!
Respect for such a being gives place to awe. I go to another shop,
holding fast to my scarlet clew. There I am shown a heap of stuff, with
more colors and shades than I had supposed existed in all the world.
What a blaze of distraction! I have been told to get as near the shade
as I could; and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to
me about of one color. But I can settle my mind on nothing. The affair
assumes a high degree of importance. I am satisfied with nothing but
perfection. I don't know what may happen if the shade is not matched. I
go to another shop, and another, and another. At last a pretty girl, who
could make any customer believe that green is blue, matches the shade in
a minute. I buy five cents worth. That was the order. Women are the
most economical persons that ever were. I have spent two hours in this
five-cent business; but who shall say they were wasted, when I take the
stuff home, and Polly says it is a perfect match, and looks so pleased,
and holds it up with the work, at arm's length, and turns her head one
side, and then takes her needle, and works it in? Working in, I can see,
my own obligingness and amiability with every stitch. Five cents is dirt
cheap for such a pleasure.
The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision. How fascinating
have the catalogues of the nurserymen become! Can I raise all those
beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferable to the other?
Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sorts of pears? I have
already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines); and I have no idea
that I have hit the right one. Must I subscribe to all the magazines and
weekly papers which offer premiums of the best vines? Oh, that all
the strawberries were rolled into one, that I could inclose all its
lusciousness in one bite! Oh for the good old days when a strawberry
was a strawberry, and there was no perplexity about it! There are more
berries now than churches; and no one knows what to believe. I have seen
gardens which were all experiment, given over to every new thing, and
which produced little or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of
expectation. People grow pear-trees at great expense of time and money,
which never yield them more than four pears to the tree. The fashions
of ladies' bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen. He who
attempts to follow them has a business for life; but his life may be
short. If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment,
I shall leave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and
swallow me and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to the old roots and
herbs of my forefathers! Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this is
not possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things,
and learn to talk knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must keep up
a reputation. I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, and elevate
themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk about all
the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, the original cost
of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.