e they are
greeted with enthusiasm by the Cornish people, and although they speak
their own tongue, they are perfectly understood. See! there is one of
the Breton onion-sellers lounging among a knot of fishermen near the
door of yonder picturesque old Cornish cottage, whilst the wife stands
in the open doorway, arms a-kimbo, listening as the foreigner tells of
the things that he has seen across the Channel since last he visited
this coast. And up the hill there, on the rickety old settle, beneath
the creaking signboard of the village inn, is another such group. As I
gaze upon these masculine but kindly faces I am half inclined to
withdraw my too hasty admission that onions have nothing about them of
sentiment, poetry, or romance.

It always strikes me as a funny thing about onions that, however fond a
man may be of the onions themselves, he detests things that are
_oniony_. Give him onions, and he will devour them with magnificent
relish. But, through some slip in the kitchen, let his porridge or his
tea taste of onions, and his wry face is a sight worth seeing! A
friend of mine keeps a large apiary. One summer he was in great glee
at the immense stores of honey that his bees were collecting. Then,
one dreadful day, he tasted it. The dainty little square of comb,
oozing with the exuding fluid, was passed round the table. Horror sat
upon every face! It turned out that the bees had discovered a large
onion plantation some distance away, and had gathered their heavy
stores from that odorous and tainted source! What could be more
abominable, even to a lover of onions, than oniony honey? We remember
Thackeray and his oniony sandwiches. Now why is it possible for me to
love onions and to hate all things oniony? The fact is that the world
has a few vigorous, decided, elementary things that absolutely decline
to be modified or watered down. 'Onions is onions!' as a well-known
character in fiction remarked on a memorable occasion, and there is a
world of significance in the bald assertion. There are some things
that are as old as the world, and as universal as man, and that are too
vivid and pronounced to humble their pride or compromise their own
distinctive glory. The exquisite shock of the bather as his naked body
plunges into the flowing tide; the instinctive recoil on seeing for the
first time a dead human body; the delicious thrill with which the lover
presses for the first time his lady's lips; the terri