I think the butcher is touched by
the influence, and cuts off a better roast for me. The butcher is my
friend when he sees that I am not wholly dependent on him.
It is at home, 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have withdrawn from the garden just when they were most attractive.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.
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