though I am not confident on this point. But if used at all, they
should be used in less quantity at one time. Tempting as their flavor
is, I seldom eat them, when I can get apples and pears; holding myself
in duty bound to use the _best_, even of the fruits.

"Fruit," says Mr. Locke, "makes one of the most difficult chapters in
the government of health, especially that of children. Our first parents
ventured Paradise for it; and it is no wonder our children cannot stand
the temptation, though it cost them their health. The regulation of this
cannot come under any one general rule; for I am by no means of their
mind who would keep children wholly from fruit, as a thing totally
unwholesome for them, by which strict way they make them but the more
ravenous after it, to eat good or bad, ripe or unripe, all that they can
get, whenever they come at it.

"Melons, peaches, most sorts of plums, and all sorts of grapes, in
_England_, I think children should be wholly kept from, as having a very
tempting taste, in a very unwholesome juice, so that if it were
possible, they should never so much as see them, or know that there was
any such thing. But strawberries, cherries, gooseberries and currants,
when thoroughly ripe, I think may be pretty safely allowed them."

Excellent as these remarks are, in general, I do not like his entire
interdiction of the use of melons, peaches, plums, and grapes, even in
England. Peaches, to be sure, as they come at a season when apples or
pears, or both of them--which are more wholesome than peaches--are
abundant, may be better omitted, delicious as they are to the taste; and
I do not think very highly of plums. But melons, in very moderate
quantity, and grapes, if we eat nothing but the ripe pulp, rejecting
both the husk and the interior hard part, including the seeds, are, I
think, useful and wholesome. On the other hand, I should never place
cherries and gooseberries in the same list with strawberries; for the
latter are, if I may use the expression, infinitely the most wholesome.

Many seem to think that not to eat all sorts of fruits is to despise, or
at least to treat with neglect the gifts of God, intended for our
reception; by which they mean, if they mean anything, that the use of
all sorts of fruits is already found out, even in the present
comparative infancy of the world. Now I do not suppose that God has made
anything in vain--absolutely so--though I do not think we have found out