the tears that live in an onion. But, as
Shakespeare implies, they are crocodile tears--without tenderness and
without emotion. Old John Wolcott, the satirist, tells how

. . . . . . Master Broadbrim
Pored o'er his father's will and dropped the onioned tear.

And Bernard Shaw writes of 'the undertaker's handkerchief, duly onioned
with some pathetic phrase.' No, onions do not lend themselves to
passion or to pathos. You would scarcely decorate the church with
onions for your sister's wedding, or plant a row of onions on a hero's
grave. And yet I scarcely know why. For, in a suitable setting, a
touch of warm romance may light up even so apparently prosaic a theme.
The coming of the swallows in the spring is scarcely a more delightful
event in Cornwall than the annual arrival of the onion-sellers from
Brittany. What a picturesque world we invade when we get among those
dreamy old fishing-villages that dot the Cornish coast!

Gold mists upon the sea and sky,
The hills are wrapped in silver veils,
The fishing-boats at anchor lie,
Nor flap their idle orange sails.

The wild and rugged sea-front is itself suggestive of rich romance and
reminiscent of bold adventure. The smugglers, the pirates, the
wreckers, and the Spanish mariners knew every bluff and headland
perfectly. And, however the world beyond may have changed, these tiny
hamlets have triumphantly defied the teeth of time. They know no
alteration. The brogue of the people is strange but rhythmic, and,
though pleasant to hear, very hard for ordinary mortals to understand.
The fisherfolk, with their strapping and stalwart forms, their bronzed
and weather-beaten features, their dark, idyllic eyes, their tanned and
swarthy skins, their odd and old-world garb, together with their
general air of being the daughters of the ocean and the sons of the
storm, seem to be a race by themselves. And he who tarries long enough
among them to become infected by the charm of their secluded and
well-ordered lives knows that one of the events of their uneventful
year is the coming of the onion-sellers from over the sea. The
historic connexion between Cornwall and Brittany is very ancient, and
is a romance in itself. The English and French coasts, as they face
each other there, are very much alike--broken, precipitous, and grand.
The peoples live pretty much the same kind of lives on either side of
the Channel. And when the onion-sellers come from Franc