epipe hat of
still more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor, pathetic old
stiff brim canted up "gallusly" in the wrong places, and said, with a
hesitation that indicated strong internal effort to "place" the gentle
old apparition, "Why . . . let me see . . . plague on it . . .
there's something about you that . . . er . . . er . . . but
I've been gone from Bermuda for twenty-seven years, and . . . hum, hum
. . . I don't seem to get at it, somehow, but there's something about
you that is just as familiar to me as--"

"Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, with innocent,
sympathetic interest.

So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal town
in the Bermuda Islands. A wonderfully white town; white as snow itself.
White as marble; white as flour. Yet looking like none of these,
exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that
will describe this peculiar white.

It was a town that was compacted together upon the sides and tops of a
cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned
away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving
coast or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but was
flecked with shining white points--half-concealed houses peeping out of
the foliage. The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, inherited
from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago. Some
ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land
a tropical aspect.

There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were
some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the
fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato. With here and there an onion.
That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in
Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda. It is
her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her
literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermuda
metaphor it stands for perfection--perfection absolute.

The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts praise when he says, "He
was an onion!" The Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts
applause when he says, "He is an onion!" The Bermudian setting his son
upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself climaxes all counsel,
supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, "Be an
onion!"