The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression); but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden.  He said it carried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seen lately.  He looked forward with delight to the time when he could again have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and not have to get so much “sarce” from Congress.

The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glass of lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.  It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak.  It would have been impossible to keep it from use by any precautions.  There are people who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with iron spikes.  Such is the adoration of Station.

NINTH WEEK

I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables, and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative anatomy and comparative philology,—­the science of comparative vegetable morality.  We live in an age of protoplasm.  And, if life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am responsible.  I will not associate with any vegetable which is disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral growth.  I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the dead-beets.  Fortunately I can cut down any sorts 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, or any flavor of high society among vegetables.  Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people, good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.  How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon a similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half so valuable!  The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where the melon is a minor gentleman.  I might also contrast the celery with the potato.  The associations are as opposite as the dining-room of the duchess and the cabin of the peasant.  I admire the potato, both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic.  I began digging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July;