第33章

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.Ishould 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.Agarden 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.