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
and cause the suppression of time-worn abuses dear to the peasant heart?
Certain it is that this character in the comedy is called the
_geometrician_, and that he does his utmost to make himself unbearable
to those who handle the pick and shovel.
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