ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 89 
voured wild oranges by the dozen, or in 
place of sweet ones; one sour orange goes 
a good way, as the common saying is; but I 
ate them, nevertheless, or rather drank them, 
and found them, in a thirsty hour, decidedly 
refreshing. 
The unusual coldness of the past season 
(Florida winters, from what I heard about 
them, must have fallen of late into a queer 
habit of being regularly exceptional) had 
made it difficult to buy sweet oranges that 
were not dry and “ punky” ! toward the stem: 
but the hardier wild fruit had weathered the 
frost, and was so juicy that, as I say, you 
did not so much eat one as drink it. As for 
the taste, it was a wholesome bitter-sour, as 
if a lemon had been flavored with quinine ; 
not quite so sour as a lemon, perhaps, nor 
quite so bitter as Peruvian bark, but, as 
it were, an agreeable compromise between 
the two. When I drank one, I not only 
quenched my thirst, but felt that I had 
taken an infallible prophylactic against the 
malarial fever. Better still, I had surprised 
myself. For one who had felt a lifelong 
1 T have heard this useful word all my life, and now . 
am surprised to find it wanting in the dictionaries. 
