rprises 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 th