JULY 27: The Potato Skins
“The potato skin is receiving fair treatment and justice at last,” said the second potato skin to the first potato skin.
“What is justice?” asked the first potato skin.
“Justice,” said the second potato skin, “is being just and to be just is to be fair. Now do you understand?”
“I do,” said the first potato skin. “Please go on with your story, and forgive me for the interruption. I don’t know much about manners. I haven’t been up in the world enough. The ground is no placefor manners, you know; at least I didn’t think so. And then our chief callers and friends were the potato bugs. They’re not overly mannerly.”
“I will forgive you,” said the second potato skin. “For I don’t know that I am mannerly myself.” The second potato skin had been trying to tell a story.
“A great professor made a study of us and he decided we were not poisonous, as some people have tried to make out, but that we were healthful and good, and that for people who didn’t care much for the taste of the skins, we could be ground very fine and cooked with cream,” continued the second potato skin.
“Fine, fine,” said the first potato skin. “To be cooked with cream sounds very nice indeed.”
“That is the way we’re going to be used,” said the second potato skin. “And isn’t it wonderful to think professors study us and our good points?”
“It does sound mighty fine,” said the first potato skin. “Somehow one doesn’t think of the two together—professors and potatoes—but it is nice to think that we are high enough up to be the companions of professors.”