"
_Von Os._ When Mercury was culminating, or Mars and Venus had got into
the ninth house.
_Dov._ 'Tis curious to reflect, that at the vast baronial feasts, in the
days of the Plantagenets and Tudors, where we read of such onslaught of
beeves, muttons, hogs, fowl and fish, the courtly knights and beauteous
dames had no other vegetable save bread--not even a potato!
_Von Os._
"They carved at the meal with their gloves of steel,
And drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd."
_Dov._ And when the cloth was drawn--
_Von Os._ Cloth!--
_Dov._ They had scarce an apple to give zest to their wine.
_Von Os._ We read of roasted crabs; and mayhap they had baked acorns and
pignuts.
_Dov._ Ha! ha! ha!--Caliban's dainties. Now we have wholesome vegetables
almost for nothing, and pine-apples for a trifle. Thanks to Mr.
Knight--push the bottle--here's to his health in a bumper.
_Von Os._ Who, walking on Chester walls in those days, and seeing the
Brassica oleracea, where it grows in abundance, would have supposed that
from it would spring cabbages as big as drums, and cauliflowers as
florid as a bishop's wig?
_Dov._ Or cautiously _chaumbering_ an acrid sloe, imagine it to be the
parent of a green gage?
_Von Os._ This is the Education of Vegetables.
_Dov._ The March of Increment!
* * * * *
THE TULIP TREE.
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