THE EARLY MARKET 



THERE are tender sticks of asparagus at Covent 

 Garden, and French beans of a very delicate green. 

 Only ounces where, in a few weeks, there will be 

 tons, every separate growth of such value that you 

 would think each must be entered in a book under 

 its own name. The first-fruits of the earth offered 

 up, if the truth must be told, to the shrine of 

 Mammon, with a keen eye to sequent blessing to 

 the worshipper. They are far more precious than 

 the oranges and bananas that the ships bring in such 

 quantities from other climes that they are cheaper 

 than our own apples. These tender greenlings 

 belong to our own clime, pioneers many files ahead 

 of robuster growths of the same kind that will bless 

 even the moorland cottager when Thermidor comes. 

 Capricious Nature, aided more and more by man, 

 grows them in seams and pockets of her own all 

 among the snow-fields and the dead and bitter wastes 

 that belong to the temperate climes during the 

 absence of the sun. Some of them are from no 

 farther south than Devonshire, some may grow 

 within a league of London, and some even two 

 hundred miles north, in the right sunny valley near 

 the warm western sea that laves North Wales. 



110 



