第15章

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 Ihave discovered the right way to do it.I treat the potato just as Iwould 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.