Whatever your gastronomic leanings may be, let you not be tempted to think lightly of the Onion.
Though its name be unhallowed when it appears in vulgar consort with Tripe, and its reek abhorrent in the habitations of the lowly, though it be viewed with contempt as a poor relation by its kinsman the lily, the Onion has a glorious past; it has a record of achievement that is second to none; it was, as I shall presently show, chiefly due to the strength of Onions that at least one of the great Egyptian Pyramids owed its existence. Even Samson might envy the record of the Onion!
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When I tell you that the Pyramids of Egypt, at any rate one of them, was built by sheer vegetable strength, you may not believe me, but perhaps you may believe the historian Herodotus.
Herodotus found engraved on one of the Pyramids a complete record of the exact number of onions, radishes and leeks supplied and consumed by the workmen who piled its monstrous stones one upon the other.[1]
And how were the Pyramids erected? By some forgotten mechanical farce? No.
According to the late Cope Whitehouse, Engineer and Egyptologist, the Pyramids were built from the apex downward over the conical hills that abound in the locality, the interior of the hill being afterwards dug away to form chambers and galleries. All of which was accomplished by the unaided physical power of human muscles and sinews.
And whence came this power?
It was derived mainly from the vegetable energy of Onions, leeks and radishes transmuted by the chemistry of digestion and assimilation to the muscles and sinews of the slaves employed in building the Pyramid.