I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,
and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
anatomy and comparative philology,--the science of comparative
vegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, if
life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose
to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am
responsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which is
disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral
growth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the dead-
beets. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like with the
hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than the
Christians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.
This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it
should be. Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others,
when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table?
The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can
put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There is
no dignity in the bean. Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongside
the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of
superiority, is, however, the child of song. It waves in all
literature. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone.
Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgar
vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society among
vegetables. Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,
good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.
How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon a
similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half so
valuable! The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where
the melon is a minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celery
with the potato. The associations are as opposite as the dining-room
of the duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato,
both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic. I began
digging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy I
have discovered the right way to do it. I treat the potato just as I
would a cow. I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroy
them; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruit
which is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, that
it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until the
frost cuts it down. It is a game that one would not undertake with a
vegetable of tone.
The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is like
conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you
scarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is,
however, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which
comes to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know; growing
more solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiter
at the center, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, like conver-
sation, requires a good deal of oil to avoid friction, and keep the
company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash of pepper; a quantity
of mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will
notice no sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar. You can put
anything, and the more things the better, into salad, as into a
conversation; but everything depends upon the skill of mixing. I
feel that I am in the best society when I am with lettuce. It is in
the select circle of vegetables. The tomato appears well on the
table; but you do not want to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable
parvenu. Of course, I have said nothing about the berries. They
live in another and more ideal region; except, perhaps, the currant.
Here we see, that, even among berries, there are degrees of breeding.
The currant is well enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color;
but I ask you to notice how far it is from the exclusive hauteur of
the aristocratic strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly
elegant raspberry.
I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able to
discover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out by
outward observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for
instance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put up
the most attractive sort of poles for my Limas. They stand high and
straight, like church-spires, in my theological garden,--lifted up;
and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. No church-
steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to draw to it
the rising generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift up my beans
towards heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet, and
then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more than
half of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis,
and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a
disregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon human
nature. And the grape is morally no better. I think the ancients,
who were not troubled with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were
right in the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have
had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and
license and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the
strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty
beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,
would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the
snake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;
and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a
firm hand, I have had to make my own "natural selection." Nothing
will so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of children
next door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could read
half as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,
"Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here." But I suppose it would
have no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick as
anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be a
cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would let
my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the fruit;
but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human
tendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors' children,
some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be a
public meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.
At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.