THE PRUNE 27 



Yet the qualities that these educated plums 

 lack are very few. Or, stated otherwise, the 

 points of education that the prune has acquired, 

 over and above other plums, are few. But they 

 are absolutely essential. 



The qualities in question are simply these: 

 A capacity to produce a large percentage of 

 sugar and store it in the juices of the fruit; and, 

 secondly, a capacity to produce a skin covering 

 having a peculiar quality of cracking in just the 

 right way when the fruit is plunged into an al- 

 kali bath. Granted these qualities, any plum is a 

 prune, lacking them, no plum is a prune of value. 



As to the varying degrees in which the qual- 

 ities may be attained by different races of prunes^ 

 we shall have more to say in a moment. 



GOING BACK TO THE BLANKET 



In order to get a clear view of the matter, it 

 will be well for us to make inquiry as to just how 

 the prune came to take on the particular kind of 

 education that now gives it distinction. By so 

 doing we shall perhaps be enabled to understand 

 better why it is that the prune finds it so easy to 

 lapse back from the standards its forbears have 

 established. 



If I had been engaged in a forty-year-long 

 quest of a perfect prune, without quite attaining 



