Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



delightfulness of a well-kept promise, since fruit of every 

 kind begins with Flowers : not such as lilies, which come 

 and go, casting their brightness on the world for only an 

 hour; but flowers that are prophets as well, sending the 

 mind forward into generous autumn. 



No one ever refuses fruit. Every man who has the 

 opportunity of eating fruit, makes the best use of his 

 chance. We are invited to fruit by the pleasant 

 consciousness that here is something upon which Nature, 

 in providing for our sustenance, has concentrated her 

 richest and most useful powers. Fruits give us all their 

 virtue at the first solicitation. We may bake if we please, 

 or boil, or stew, but very few indeed are the fruits which 

 are not eatable just as they come from the tree or the 

 plant, charged with wooing nectar, and that dissolve 

 almost upon the instant ; or if not juicy, then of the 

 capital substance of the filbert and the chestnut. Their 

 charm does not wait, like that of dinner-vegetables, for 

 bringing forth under the influence of fire. A little sugar 

 now and then, or a touch of salt, adds a certain chaste 

 felicity to the flavour. In the aggregate they are still 

 independent of any artifices we may call to our aid. 

 Matured in the sunshine, they are themselves like the 

 sunbeams of heaven, which ask nothing from mankind 

 but grateful reception and perennial enjoyment. Because 

 so useful to us and this not simply as aliment, but 

 very generally as sustainers and restorers of health, 

 "good physicians" really and truly Nature has endowed 

 fruits with all sorts of pretty wiles and persuasions to 



