THE INCOMPARABLE ORANGE 



to anyone familiar with the annals of the Paris stage that 

 I refer to a very distant period. I could not have 

 been more than eight years old. In those days, appar- 

 ently, the custom, delectable to the boys if less so to 

 their elders, of consuming oranges between the acts had 

 not yet fallen into desuetude. 



It is very odd. There are as we know a large number of 

 recognized methods of eating an orange: from the 

 elaborate and super-epicurean Japanese dissection within 

 the skin, which removes every pellicule and every pip out 

 out of the fruit, preparatory to " spooning " the pure pulp, 

 with or without sugar, down to the simple suction known 

 as " Mattie's way/' Whatever be the process, the effect 

 never fails if I stand by : as sure as the first puff of fresh 

 orange peel meets me, so is my mind instantly brought 

 back to some scene connected with " Leather Stocking "/ to 

 some sense of the very first dramatic emotion ever known 

 the silent laughter of the trapper / the faint, distant war- 

 yell of the Huron / the darting of the bark canoe down the 

 rapid / the crack of a gun : the flare of the camp firewhat 

 not ? It is, of course, but a transient flash now, but there 

 it always starts, harking, for a second or so, back half a 

 century in the middle of completely unrelated thoughts and 

 in surroundings the least likely to evoke the past in the 

 silence of a sick bedside, or amid the hot dustiness of a 

 holiday crowd ,- or even, at dessert time, in the company 

 of some fair neighbour whose young, healthy powers of 

 table enjoyment enable her to conclude a regular dinner 

 with a whole orange eaten in the appreciative and fragrant 

 manner known as a la Maltaise. 



Scent alone, and that only for a second at a time, possesses 



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