probably chaste and serious in his origin, however, like the mystery of
reproduction, but insensibly degraded by licentiousness of manners and
disordered ideas.

However that may be, the triumphal procession arrives at the bride's
house and marches into her garden. There they select the finest cabbage,
which is not quickly done, for the ancients hold a council and discuss
the matter at interminable length, each pleading for the cabbage which
seems to him the best adapted for the occasion. The question is put to a
vote, and when the choice is made, the _gardener_ fastens his rope
around the stalk and goes as far away as the size of the garden permits.
The gardener's wife looks out to see that the sacred vegetable is not
injured in its fall. The _Jesters_ of the wedding-party, the
hemp-beater, the grave-digger, the carpenter, or the cobbler,--in a
word, all those who do not work on the land, and who, as they pass
their lives in other people's houses, are reputed to have and do really
have more wit and a readier tongue than the simple agricultural
laborers,--take their places around the cabbage. One digs a trench with
the spade, so deep that you would say he was preparing to dig up an
oak-tree. Another puts on his nose a _drogue_, made of wood or
pasteboard, in imitation of a pair of spectacles: he performs the duties
of _engineer_, comes forward, walks away, prepares a plan, overlooks the
workmen, draws lines, plays the pedant, cries out that they are spoiling
the whole thing, orders the work to be abandoned and resumed according
to his fancy, and makes the performance as long and as absurd as he can.
Is this an addition to the former programme of the ceremony, in mockery
of theorists in general, for whom the ordinary peasant has the most
sovereign contempt, or in detestation of land-surveyors, who control the
register of lands and assess the taxes, or of the employees of the
Department of Roads and Bridges, who convert common lands into highways