The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento oranges are usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of the fruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it is that is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say, if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),—­or he might as well eat a lemon.  The mercenary aspect of my query does not enter in here.  I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of the branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comes off easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top bough with a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, I call it a cheap one.  I can usually tell whether they are good by splitting them open and eating a quarter.  The Italians pare their oranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and see the yellow meat in the white casket.  After you have eaten a few from one tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but there is nothing certain about it,—­one bough that gets the sun will be better than another that does not, and one half of an orange will fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.

The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along the lanes, don’t cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think the girls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile:  and, in that, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor.  I have no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have been seeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves.  As I walked towards the heights, the other morning, and passed an orchard, the gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, to reach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he had been picking.  As an experiment on the price, I offered him a two-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name of money,—­when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as I liked.  He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new red Phrygian cap; and I had n’t the heart to take advantage of his generosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest.  One ought never to abuse generosity.

Another experience was of a different sort, and illustrates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of prices.  One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a handcart with several large baskets of oranges.  The cart stood untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the owner.  After some time a fellow got from the open front of the neighboring cobbler’s shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and sauntered towards me.