Tablets. Alcott Amos Bronson
declined that service for his new Roanoke plant, the potato, leaving it for the books to give this prose version instead: – "Sir Walter gave some samples of it to his gardener as a fine fruit from Virginia, desiring him to plant them. The roots flowered in August, and in September produced the fruit; but the berries were so different from what the gardener expected, that, in ill-humor, he carried them to his master, asking, if this was the fine fruit which he had praised so highly? Sir Walter either was, or pretended to be ignorant of the matter, and desired the gardener, since that was the case, to dig up the weed and throw it away." It appears, however, that the gardener, who was an Irishman, and had the best of rights to christen it, soon returned with the good parcel of potatoes, from whose thrift his own country was supplied, and in time distributed so widely as almost to supersede the ancient turnips, once the favorite of husbandmen; the more religious of them, Columella tells us, in his time, "sprinkling the seed when they sowed it as if they meant to supply the King, and his subjects also."
The turnip and the bean – this last held sacred by the Greeks, and which Pythagoras honored with a symbol – have lost much of the solid repute they once enjoyed here in New England and elsewhere. Good citizens and loyal republicans were fed chiefly from their stanch virtues, knowing how to prize their independence, and to secure it to their descendants. The great staples were grown on their farms and manufactured into substantial comforts without loss of self-respect. Bread was home-grown, kneaded of fresh flour, ground in the neighborhood; the grain sown in hope, their
"Six months' sunshine bound in sheaves,"
being brought home in thankfulness. The grain harvesting was the pride and praise of the country round, as good to be sung as the Syrian pastoral of Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz. But this, and other customs, introduced with the cultivation of wheat into Britain, and brought here by the Puritan planters, are fast fading from memory, and the coming generation will need commentaries on Tusser and Thomson to make plain our reaping-idyl.
As kindles now the blazing East
Afield I haste,
Eager the sickle's feat to play,
Sweeping along the stalked fields my widening way;
Vexing the eared spires,
Pricked with desires,
My golden gavels on the stubble spend,
And to the fair achievement every member lend,
The laughing breeze my colleague in my forte,
While the grave sun beams zealous on the sport.
Nor doth penurious gain famish my fist,
As earing fast it sheds abundant grist,
And gleaning damsels kerchief all they list, —
Kindly conceive me friendliest of peers,
And glad my brows adorn with yellow ears;
The wide-spread field, its sheafed hoard,
The lively symbol of their liberal Lord,
Whose plenteous crop, and ripe supply
Areapéd is of every hand and eye —
An opulent shock for poor humanity.
Their garments, too, were home-spun. Every house, the scene of sprightly industry, was Homeric as were the employments in the garden of Alcinous,
"Where to encounter feast with housewifery,
In one room, numerous women did apply
Their several tasks; some apple-colored corn
Ground in fair querns, and some did spindles turn;
Some work in looms; no hand least rest receives,
But all have motion apt as aspen leaves;
And from the weeds they wove, so fast they laid
And so thick thrust together thread by thread,
That the oil of which the wool had drank its fill,
Did with his moisture in bright dews distil."
It was plain wool and flax which they spun and wove thus innocently, nor suspected the web of sophistries that was to be twisted and coiled about the countries' liberties from a coming rival. "The weed which, planted long ago by the kings of Tyre, made their city a great nation, their merchantmen princes, and spread the Tyrian dye throughout the world; of which Solomon obtained a branch, and made his little kingdom the admiration of surrounding nations; of which Alexander sowed the seed in the city to which he gave his name, and Constantine transplanted to Constantinople; which the first Edward sowed on the banks of the Thames, and Elizabeth lived to see blossom through the nourishment which her enlightened mind procured, not only from the original soil of the Levant but from the eastern and newly discovered western world, as well as from the North," – this famous plant, thus cherished by kings, has now become King, and wields its sceptre over the most cultivated and prosperous nations of the earth; its history for the last half century being more closely woven with civilization, than perhaps any other commodity known to commerce. And whether it shall be woven into robes of coronation or the shroud of freedom, for the freest of Republics, the fortunes of races, the present moment is determining.
Lettuce has always been loyal. Herodotus tells us that it was served at royal tables some centuries before the Christian era, and one of the Roman families ennobled its name with that of Lactucinü. So spinach, asparagus and celery have been held in high repute among the eastern nations, as with us. And the parable of the mustard seed shows that plant was known in Christ's time. The Greeks are said to have esteemed radishes so highly that, in offering oblations to Apollo, they presented them in beaten gold. And the Emperor Tiberius held parsnips in such high repute that he had them brought annually from the Rhine for his table. The beet is still prized, but the carrot has lost the reputation it had in Queen Elizabeth's time, the leaves being used in the head-dresses of the ladies of her court, from whence the epithet applied to the hair is derived.
Peas had scarcely made their appearance at the tables of the court of Elizabeth, "being very rare," Fuller says, "in the early part of her reign, and seldom seen except they were brought from Holland, and these were dainties for ladies, they came so far and cost so dear." Nor did the currant appear much earlier in European gardens, coming first under the name of the Corinthian grape: Evelyn calls the berries Corinths. So the damson took its name from Damascus; the cherry from Cerasus, a city of Pontus; and the peach from Persia. The quince, first known as the Cydonian apple, was dedicated to the goddess of love; and pears, like apples, are from Paradise.
The apple is the representative fruit, and owes most to culture in its ancient varieties of quince, pear, pomegranate, citron, peach; as it comprehended all originally. Of these, pears and peaches have partaken more largely of man's essence, and may be called creations of his, being civilized in the measure he is himself; as are the apple and the grape. These last are more generally diffused over the earth, and their history embraces that of the origin and progress of mankind, the apple being coeval with man; Eve's apple preserving the traditions of his earliest experiences, and the grape appears in connection with him not long after his story comes into clearness from the dimness of the past.
Fruits have the honor of being most widely diffused geographically, grown with the kindliest care, and of being first used by man as food. They still enter largely into the regimen of the cultivated nations, and are the fairest of civilizers; like Orpheus, they tame the human passions to consonance and harmony by their lyric influence. The use of them is of that universal importance that we cannot subsist in any plenty or elegance without them. And everywhere beside the cultivated man grows the orchard, to intimate his refinement in those excellences most befitting his race. The Romans designated the union of all the virtues in the word we render fruit; and bread comes from Pan, the representative of Nature, whose stores we gather for our common sustenance in our pantries. Biography shows that fruit has been the preferred food of the most illuminated persons of past times, and of many of the ablest. It is friendly to the human constitution, and has been made classic by the pens of poets who have celebrated its beauty and excellence.
The food of