Cauliflowers are twenty times better
than cabbages, for they show the wave breaking as well as curling,
and the efflorescence of the branching foam, blind bubbling,
and opaque. Moreover, the strong lines of life are suggested;
the arches of the rushing waves have all the rigid energy of green stalks,
as if the whole sea were one great green plant with one immense
white flower rooted in the abyss.
Now, a large number of delicate and superior persons would refuse
to see the force in that kitchen garden comparison, because it is not
connected with any of the ordinary maritime sentiments as stated in books
and songs. The aesthetic amateur would say that he knew what large
and philosophical thoughts he ought to have by the boundless deep.
He would say that he was not a greengrocer who would think first
of greens. To which I should reply, like Hamlet, apropos of
a parallel profession, "I would you were so honest a man."
The mention of "Hamlet" reminds me, by the way, that besides
the girl who had never seen the sea, I knew a girl who had never
seen a stage-play. She was taken to "Hamlet," and she said it
was very sad. There is another case of going to the primordial
point which is overlaid by learning and secondary impressions.
We are so used to thinking of "Hamlet" as a problem that we
sometimes quite forget that it is a tragedy, just as we are so used
to thinking of the sea as vast and vague, that we scarcely notice
when it is white and green.
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