however, that the effect is most marked, though sometimes
in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of any Roman
supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my own vegetables; when
everything on the table is the product of my own labor, except the
clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and the chickens, which
have withdrawn from the garden just when they were most attractive. It
is strange what a taste you suddenly have for things you never liked
before. The squash has always been to me a dish of contempt; but I eat
it now as if it were my best friend. I never cared for the beet or
the bean; but I fancy now that I could eat them all, tops and all, so
completely have they been transformed by the soil in which they grew. I
think the squash is less squashy, and the beet has a deeper hue of rose,
for my care of them.

I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a table
whereon was the fruit of my honest industry. But woman!--John Stuart
Mill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women. Six
thousand years is as one day with them. I thought I had something to do
with those vegetables. But when I saw Polly seated at her side of the
table, presiding over the new and susceptible vegetables, flanked by
the squash and the beans, and smiling upon the green corn and the new
potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which lay sliced in ice before her,
and when she began to dispense the fresh dishes, I saw at once that the
day of my destiny was over. You would have thought that she owned all
the vegetables, and had raised them all from their earliest years. Such
quiet, vegetable airs! Such gracious appropriation! At length I said,--
"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"

"James, I suppose."

"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. But who
hoed them?"

"We did."

"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.

And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug
came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered
night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I,
uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that
does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow, not a beet
that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has not caused me
untold anxiety; and I did hope--but I will say no more."

Observation.--In this sort of family discussion,