第18章

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is the product of my own labor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and the chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when they were most attractive.It is strange what a taste you suddenly have for things you never liked before.The squash has always been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.Inever 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.You would have thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had raised them all from their earliest years.Such quiet, vegetable airs! Such gracious appropriation! At length I said,--"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?""James, I suppose."

"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent.But who hoed them?""We did."

"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.

And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants.I tell you, Polly,"said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow, not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has not caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope--but I will say no more."Observation.--In this sort of family discussion, "I will say no more" is the most effective thing you can close up with.

I am not an alarmist.I hope I am as cool as anybody this hot summer.But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman, "You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what is more important, the consciousness of power in vegetables." I see how it is.Woman is now supreme in the house.She already stretches out her hand to grasp the garden.She will gradually control everything.

Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have ever mingled in human affairs.I understand those women who say they don't want the ballot.They purpose to hold the real power while we go through the mockery of making laws.They want the power without the responsibility.(Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans--as they threatened at one time--had gone the wrong way: where would I have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities.Woman takes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only.And what is politics? Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, says Polly, and I care not who makes its politics.Here I sat at the table, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my own vegetables.While we are being amused by the ballot, woman is quietly taking things into her own hands.