68 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
How we do revel in ripe fruit! And then — all of a 
sudden — the procession has passed. The seemingly 
endless abundance stops short. You realize with a 
sort of anger that it has gone. Why did you not eat 
more? Why did you not pickle, preserve, can all 
those vanished blessings tenfold more than you did? 
It seemed as though such abundance could never 
end — and now — ! 
But it is not quite ended. If you look over those 
fields where, in spite of the efforts of the farmer, the 
great blue passion-flowers bloomed all summer, you 
will see leathery-skinned fruits as large as a goose 
egg lying about by the basketful. These are may- 
pops. If you break open a thoroughly ripe one, you 
will be assailed by an aroma that makes you think of 
tropical fruits, of perfumed bowers, of Arabian 
Nights banquets, of fairy gardens, and strange 
tropical flowers. Inside, the maypop resembles a 
pomegranate, but the patrician pomegranate has no 
such heavenly flavor as has this wild and worthless 
maypop. What our fruit-makers are thinking of 
not to cultivate the maypop, one cannot imagine. 
It offers possibilities that ought to tempt them be- 
yond the power of resistance. In some parts of the 
mountains the people call themaypops "apricots" 
and eat them, though they belong principally to the 
age of childhood. These strange, exquisite, good-for- 
nothing fruits are the product of the passion-flower 
vine. 
Later than the cultivated grapes, about the time 
of the maypops, come the wild grapes, among them 
