And yet the Onion, although, like the proverbial Prophet, it may be without honor among its fellow vegetables, is regarded by at least one human outsider as the giant and ox and Samson combined of the vegetable world. Whatever your gastronomic leanings may be, let you not be tempted to think lightly of the Onion. Though its name be unhallowed when it appears in vulgar consort with Tripe, and its reek abhorrent in the habitations of the lowly, though it be viewed with contempt as a poor relation by its kinsman the lily, the Onion has a glorious past; it has a record of achievement that is second to none; it was, as I shall presently show, chiefly due to the strength of Onions that at least one of the great Egyptian Pyramids owed its existence. Even Samson might envy the record of the Onion! * * * * * When I tell you that the Pyramids of Egypt, at any rate one of them, was built by sheer vegetable strength, you may not believe me, but perhaps you may believe the historian Herodotus. Herodotus found engraved on one of the Pyramids a complete record of the exact number of onions, radishes and leeks supplied and consumed by the workmen who piled its monstrous stones one upon the other.[1] And how were the Pyramids erected? By some forgotten mechanical farce? No. According to the late Cope Whitehouse, Engineer and Egyptologist, the Pyramids were built from the apex downward over the conical hills that abound in the locality, the interior of the hill being afterwards dug away to form chambers and galleries. All of which was accomplished by the unaided physical power of human muscles and sinews. And whence came this power? It was derived mainly from the vegetable energy of Onions, leeks and radishes transmuted by the chemistry of digestion and assimilation to the muscles and sinews of the slaves employed in building the Pyramid. Furthermore, Herodotus tells us that with the engraved record of the onions, leeks and radishes consumed by the slaves, was also the computation of their cost which amounted to 1,600 talents of silver, this being the total cost of the vegetable fuel for operating the human machinery employed in the construction of the Pyramid. And now let me ask you—what it is, this thing we call Scent, this mysterious emanation which is the Love Message of the Rose, the Call of the Sea, the Strength of the Onion? You don’t know? Neither do I, no more does anybody.