and enjoy the fugitive excellences which fruits possess.  Can a gourmand ever properly appreciate rare and fragile flavours?  Though he may be a great artist in edible discords—­things rank and gross and startling—­can he in the quantity of inconvenient food he consumes, be expected to pose as a critic of the most etherealised branch of epicureanism?  The true eater of fruit is of a school apart, not to be classed with the individual who, because of the rites and observances of the table, accepts, in no exalted spirit, a portion of fruit at the nether end of a feast.  He is one who has attained, or to whom has been vouchsafed, a poignant sense of all that does the least violence to the sense of taste and smell; but, moreover, who is capable of discovering edification in things as diverse as the loud jack fruit and the subtle mangosteen—­who can appreciate each according to its special characteristics, just as a lover of music finds gratification of a varied nature in the grand harmonies of a Gregorian Chant and in the tender cadences of a song of Sullivan’s.  Are those who have sensitive and correct palates for fruit not to be credited with art and exactitude, as well as critics of music and painting and statuary, and connoisseurs of wine?

As with many other fruits, so with the papaw.  Only those who grow it themselves, who learn of the relative merits of the produce of different trees, and who can time their acceptance of it from the tree, so that it shall possess all its fleeting elements in the happy blending of full maturity, can know how good and great papaw really is.  The fruit of some particular tree is of course not to be tolerated save as a vegetable, and then what a desirable vegetable it is?  It has a precise and particular flavour, and texture most agreeable.  And as a mere fruit there are many more rich and luscious, and highly-flavoured; many that provoke louder and more sincere acclamations of approval.  But the papaw, delicate and grateful, is more than a mere fruit.  If we give credence to all that scientific research has made known of it, we shall have to concede that the papaw possesses social influences more potent than many of the political devices of this socialistic age.

But there may be some who do not know that the humble papaw (CARICA PAPYA) belongs to the passion-fruit family (PASSIFLORA) a technical title bestowed on account of a fancied resemblance in the parts of the flower to the instruments of Christ’s sufferings and death.  And it is said to have received its generic name on account of its foliage somewhat resembling that of the common fig.  A great authority on the botany of India suggested that it was originally introduced from the district of Papaya, in Peru, and that “papaw” is merely a corruption of that name.  The tree is, as a rule, unbranched, and somewhat palm-like in form.  Its great leaves, often a foot and a half long, borne on smooth, cylindrical stalks, are curiously cut into seven lobes, and the stem is hollow and transversely partitioned with thin membranes.