Ripened in ample light, with abundance of water, and in high temperature, the fruit must not be torn from the tree “with forced fingers rude,” lest the abbreviated stalk pulls out a jagged plug, leaving a hole for the untimely air to enter.  The stalk must be carefully cut, and the spice-exhaling fruit borne reverently and immediately to the table.  The rite is to be performed in the cool of the morning, for the papaw is essentially a breakfast fruit, and then when the knife slides into the buff-coloured flesh of a cheesy consistency, minute colourless globules exude from the facets of the slices.  These glistening beads are emblems of perfection.  Plentiful dark seeds adhere to the anterior surface.  Some take their papaw with the merest sensation of salt, some with sugar and a drop or two of lime or lemon juice; some with a few of the seeds, which have the flavour of nasturtium.  The wise eat it with silent praise.  In certain obvious respects it has no equal.  It is so clean; it conveys a delicate perception of musk—­sweet, not florid; soft, soothing and singularly persuasive.  It does not cloy the palate, but rather seductively stimulates the appetite.  Its effect is immediately comforting, for to the stomach it is pleasant, wholesome, and helpful.  When you have eaten of a papaw in its prime, one that has grown without check or hindrance, and has been removed from the tree without bruise or blemish, you have within you pure, good and chaste food, and you should be thankful and of a gladsome mind.  Moreover, no untoward effects arise from excess of appetite.  If you be of the fair sex your eyes may brighten on such diet, and your complexion become more radiant.  If a mere man you will be the manlier.

So much on account of the fruit.  Sometimes the seeds are eaten as a relish, or macerated in vinegar as a condiment, when they resemble capers.  The pale yellow male flowers, immersed in a solution of common salt, are also used to give zest to the soiled appetite, the combination of flavour being olive-like, piquant and grateful.  The seeds used as a thirst-quencher form component parts of a drink welcome to fever patients.  The papaw and the banana in conjunction form an absolutely perfect diet.  What the one lacks in nutritive or assimilative qualities the other supplies.  No other food, it is asserted is essential to maintain a man in perfect health and vigour.  Our fictitious appetites may pine for wheaten bread, oatmeal, flesh, fish, eggs, and all manner of vegetables but given the papaw and the banana, the rest are superfluous.  Where the banana grows the papaw flourishes.  Each is singular from the fact that it represents wholesome food long before arrival at maturity.

Then as a medicine plant the papaw is of great renown.  The peculiar properties of the milky juice which exudes from every part of the plant were noticed two hundred years ago.  The active principle of the juice known as papain, said to be capable of digesting two hundred times its weight of fibrine, is used for many disorders and ailments, from dyspepsia to ringworm and ichthyosis or fish-skin disease.