Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1915 — RHUBARB IN THE SPRING [ARTICLE]

RHUBARB IN THE SPRING

Enthusiast Classes Vegetable as Composite of Early Sunshine and the Song of the Robin.

There are many “rhubarb recipes for spring days.” They are for fritters and pie. And their very sounds put a smile on life. Therd are some people who affect to look down on rhubarb as" a sort of plebeian dish, unfit for patrician palates. Such people defraud themselves. They revel in their own prejudices. Rhubarb is the very essence of spring, a happy composite of the early sunshine and the song of the robin. Of course, hard hearts cannot see it thus, for rhubarb was made for gentle souls. But the fritters and the pie are not so much the melody of spring as the sauce, when brought forth by a grace, a smile and a sweet thought. It is these that awaken the morning sun In the plant and melt the dews and start the birds to singing. Prejudice and vanity will never do it. That ruddy glow in the sauce is the reflection of the heart, and if it is not there the heart Is not in it. Oh, there be rhubarb sauces that are an insult to spring and make the appetite hanker for kraut and turnips, but the real sauce, from which the spirit of the opening year sings Its song of faith and love —that is the sauce that turns rugged life into tender sentiment and changes hunger into delight—Columbus Journal.