THE first basket of cucumbers appeared in our market last week. Cucumbers are man's earliest friends. In appearance they are the most unpretentious among vegetables; but in character they take the precedence. When a cucumber first comes around, there is a general feeling of uneasiness, arising from a doubt, whose subtle influence is felt throughout the community. But this uneasiness wears off alter a while, and suspicion gives way to genuine regard. In fact, there is not a vegetable which comes to the market that will command the respect a cucumber receives. When we see a cucumber, we are led to look back over its career. It has been a stormy one, even under the most favorable circumstances possible to cucumber development. Only about one in ten starting even in life ever reaches a position in society. There is some recompense, of course, in the excitement which arises from the dangers; and we can well believe that it must be eminently gratifying to a successful cucumber, when it has gained the victory, to find, that, instead of sinking into helpless old age,