"It is incredible!" she exclaimed. "My Aunt Wyllys actually going to marry that prosing, napping Mr. Hubbard; Uncle Dozie!" "When I remember her husband," said Miss Agnes, with feeling, "it does seem incredible; my dear, warm-hearted, handsome, animated brother George!" "How extraordinary!" said Elinor, who could do nothing but exclaim. "No; not in the least extraordinary," added Miss Agnes; "such marriages, dear, seem quite common." Mr. Wyllys was not at all astonished at the intelligence. "I have expected that Harriet would marry, all along; she has a great many good intentions, and some good qualities; but I knew she would not remain a widow. It is rather strange that she should have chosen James Hubbard; but she might have done worse." With these philosophical reflections, Mrs. Wyllys's friends looked forward to the happy event which was soon to take place. The very same morning that Miss Agnes was taken into the confidence of the bride, the friends of the groom also learned the news, but in a more indirect manner. The charms of a parterre are daily be-rhymed in verse, and vaunted in prose, but the beauties of a vegetable garden seldom meet with the admiration they might claim. If you talk of beets, people fancy them sliced with pepper and vinegar; if you mention carrots, they are seen floating in soup; cabbage figures in the form of cold-slaw, or disguised under drawn-butter; if you refer to corn, it appears to the mind's eye wrapt in a napkin to keep it warm, or cut up with beans in a succatash {sic}. Half the people who see these good things daily spread on the board before them, are only acquainted with vegetables after they have been mutilated and disguised by cookery. They would not know the leaf of a beet from that of the spinach, the green tuft of a carrot from the delicate sprigs of parsley. Now, a bouquet of roses and pinks is certainly a very beautiful object, but a collection of fine vegetables, with the rich variety of shape and colour, in leaf, fruit, and root, such as nature has given them to us, is a noble sight. So thought Uncle Dozie, at least. The rich texture and shading of the common cabbage-leaf was no novelty to him; he had often watched the red, coral-like veins in the glossy green of the beet; the long, waving leaf of the maize, with the silky tassels of its ears, were beautiful in his eyes; and so were the rich, white heads of the cauliflower, delicate as carved ivory, the feathery tuft of the carrot, the purple fruit of the egg-plant, and the brilliant scarlet tomato. He came nearer than most Christians, out of Weathersfield, to sympathy with the old Egyptians in their onion-worship. {"parterre" = ornamental flower garden; "out of Weathersfield" = Wethersfield (the modern spelling), Connecticut, was famous for its onions (there is still a red onion called "Red Weathersfield"), until struck by a blight about 1840; "old Egyptians" = ancient Egypt was proverbial for worshiping the onion}