THE FEAST OF VEGETABLES 109 



Really, the title of this chapter is inaccurate, 

 for we do not have in July a '"feast" of vegetables 

 in the sense of variety — that comes in September, 

 after we are home from Eagles Mere, and when 

 some weeks of hotel eating, with the can-opener 

 working overtime, have prepared us to appreciate 

 the fresh delights of our home garden. Yet July 

 is a feast month for vegetables, because it opens 

 the season for several that we hke. The first 

 "string" beans — so called, I presume, because we 

 wouldn't touch them if they weren't entirely 

 stringless! — are now available, and are good to 

 eat; very good. Always we grow too many of 

 them, and give away too few, so that there is a 

 waste of good food. Why could I hand my friend 

 a good cigar — if I used the dead things myseM! — ■ 

 with assurance of his courteous acceptance, and be 

 afraid to send him enough crisp yellow beans to 

 give him and his family a vegetable treat they can 

 not obtain for themselves in any market? His 

 wife will eat contentedly of a box of candy on the 

 hving-room table when she calls, but might enter- 

 tain the suspicion that we were considering her an 

 object of charity if we offered her a bunch of fresh, 

 crisp radishes, ten minutes out of the ground. 

 Something is wrong in our sense of proportion, I 

 think. Perhaps I shall acquu^e courage eventually, 



