Strawberries are delicious, as every one knows. 'It may be,' says Dr. Boteler, a quaint old English writer, 'it may be that God could make a better berry than a strawberry, but most certainly He never did.' Yes, strawberries are delicious; but I am not going to write about strawberries. Cream is also very nice, very nice indeed; but nothing shall induce me to write about cream. I have promised myself a chapter, neither on _strawberries_ nor on _cream_, but on _strawberries and cream_. The distinction, as I shall endeavour to show, is a vitally important one. Now the theme was suggested on this wise. I was walking through the city this afternoon, when I met a gentleman from whom, only this morning, I received an important letter. We shook hands, and were just plunging into the subject-matter of his letter when a tall policeman reminded us of the illegality of loitering on the pavement. Yet it was too hot to walk about.
'Come in here,' my companion suggested, pointing to a café near by, 'and have a cup of afternoon tea.'
'No, thank you,' I replied, 'I had a cup not long ago.'
The temptation was too strong for me; he had touched a vulnerable point; and I succumbed. The afternoon was very oppressive; the restaurant looked invitingly cool; a quiet corner among the ferns seemed to beckon us; and the strawberries and cream, daintily served, soon completed our felicity.
Strawberries and cream! It is an odd conjunction when you come to think of it. The gardener goes off to his well-kept beds and brings back a big basket, lined with cabbage leaves, and filled to the brim with fine fresh strawberries. The maid slips off to the dairy and returns with a jug of rich and foamy cream. To what different realms they belong! The gardener lives, moves, and has his being in one world; the milkmaid spends her life in quite another. The cream belongs to the animal kingdom; the strawberries to the vegetable kingdom. But here, on these pretty little plates in the fern-grot are the gardener's world and the milkmaid's world beautifully blended. Here, on the table before us, are the animal and the vegetable kingdom perfectly supplementing and completing each other. It is another phase of the wonder which suggested the nursery rhyme: