CUCUMBERS.
WHAT would the orthodox English gardener, who cherishes these esculents under glass frames, and carefully lays a piece of slate under each developing gherkin to protect it from the damp earth on which it reposes, say, if he could see the cucumbers of Japan reared on poles from twelve to fifteen feet in height, after the fashion of hops or scarlet runners, the largest and heaviest hanging self-supperting from the topmost tendrils of the clustering vines?
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Mark Twain's amusing story of the widow who wrote in great anxiety of mind to the American statesman Horace Greeley, asking his advice upon the mental condition of her only son, whose intellect was gradually giving way under the pressure of a futile attempt on his part to make turnips grow like vines, was not such a far-fetched yarn after all, for had the unhappy youth been able to make the experiment in Japan, he would doubtless have accomplished the object of his ambition and preserved his mental balance at the same time.
There must be some strong similarity of construction in the stalks of Japanese cucumbers and the necks of Japanese babies, whose heads are allowed to hang, or rather dangle from their nurses' backs without the slightest support, at an angle which would infallibly break the neck of any infant of European origin, or at least we should be so certain that such would be the result that we should never risk making the experiment.
Yet the cucumber never falls or breaks the vine, and not only do the infants survive their break-neck ordeal, but few countries in the world can show a race of young men whose heads are more erectly poised upon their necks than those of the middle and lower orders of Japan.
Does not this tend to prove that we, from whom the Japanese have learnt so much, are yet far behind them in that we have from time immemorial been needlessly supporting the heads of our babies and the stalks of our cucumbers, by allowing the latter to grovel on the ground instead of aspiring towards the sky?
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