44 FRUIT. 



well-known fruits ; and that the Le Clerc Pear and an Honest John 

 Peach were the secretaries ; and a pair of very astringent looking 

 fellows one a Crab Apple, and the other a Choke Pear were ser- 

 geants-at-arms, or door-keepers. Their duties seemed to be chiefly 

 that of preventing some brambles from clambering up the walls and 

 looking in the windows, and a knot of saucy looking blackamoors, 

 whom we discovered to be only Black Currants, from crowding up 

 the lobbies ; the latter in particular, being in bad odor with many 

 of the members. 



There was a little stir on the left, and a solid, substantial, well- 

 to-do personage rose, who we recognized immediately as the New- 

 town Pippin. He had the air of a man about sixty ; but there was 

 a look of sound health about him which made you feel sure of his 

 hundredth year. 



The Newtown Pippin said it was needless for him to remark that 

 this was no common meeting. The members were all aware that 

 no ordinary motives had called together this great convention of 

 fruits. He was proud and happy to welcome so many natives and 

 naturalized citizens, all bearing evidence of having taken kindly 

 to the soil of this great and happy country. Every one present 

 knows, the world begins to know, he remarked, that North America 

 is the greatest of fruit-growing countries (hear, hear), that the United 

 States was fast becoming the favored land of Pomona, who, indeed, 

 was always rather republican in her taste, and hated, above all 

 things, the fashion in aristocratic countries of tying her up to walls, 

 and confining her under glass. He preferred the open air, and the 

 free breath of orchards. 



But, he said, it was necessary to come to business. This conven- 

 tion had met to discuss the propriety and necessity of passing an 

 alien law, by which all foreigners, on settling in this country, should 

 be obliged to drop their foreign names, or, rather, have them trans- 

 lated into plain English. The cultivators of fruit were, take them alto- 

 gether, a body of plain, honest countrymen, who, however they might 

 relish foreign fruits, did not get on well with foreign names. They 

 found them to stick in their throats to such a degree that they could 

 not make good bargains over such gibberish. The question to be 

 brought before this meeting, therefore, was nothing more nor less tha* 



