74 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



I do not like with the hoe, and, probably, 

 commit no more sin in so doing, than 

 the Christians did in hewing down the 

 Jews in the middle ages. 



This matter of vegetable rank has not 

 been at all studied as it should be. 

 Why do we respect some vegetables, 

 and despise others, when all of them 

 come to an equal honor or ignominy on 

 the table ? The bean is a graceful, 

 confiding, engaging vine ; but you 

 never can put beans into poetry, nor 

 into the highest sort of prose. There 

 is no dignity in the bean. Corn, which, 

 in my garden, grows alongside the 

 bean, and, so far as I can see, with no 

 affectation of superiority, is, however, 

 the child of song. It waves in all 

 literature. But mix it with beans, and 

 its high tone is gone. Succotash is 

 vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean 

 is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, 



