, and its name is mangosteen. It is
about the size of a pippin apple, and of a purple color--a very dark
purple, too. The husk, or rind, is about half an inch thick, and
contains a bitter juice, which is used in the preparation of dye; it
stains the fingers like aniline ink, and is not easy to wash off. Nature
has wisely provided this protection for the fruit; if it had no more
covering than the ordinary skin of an apple, the birds would eat it all
up as soon as it was ripe. If I were a bird, and had a bill that would
open the mangosteen, I would eat nothing else as long as I could get at
it.

"You cut this husk with a sharp knife right across the centre, and then
you open it in two parts. Out comes a lump of pulp as white as snow, and
about the size of a small peach. It is divided into sections, like the
interior of an orange, and there is a sort of star on the outside that
tells you, before you cut the husk, exactly how many of these sections
there are. Having got at the pulp, you proceed to take the lump into
your mouth, and eat it; and you will be too busy for the next quarter of
a minute to say anything.

"Hip! hip! hurrah! It melts away in your mouth like an overripe peach or
strawberry; it has a taste that is slightly acid--very slightly,
too--but you can no more describe all the flavor of it than you can
describe how a canary sings, or a violet smells. There is no other fruit
I ever tasted that begins to compare with it, though I hesitate to admit
that there is anything to surpass our American strawberry in its
perfection, or the American peach. If you could get all the flavors of
our best fruits in one, and then give that one the 'meltingness' of the
mangosteen, perhaps you might equal it; but till you can do so, there is
no use denying that the tropics have the prince of fruits.

"Everybody tells us we can eat all the mangosteens we wish to, without
the slightest fear of ill results. Perhaps one might get weary of them
in time, but at present we are unable to find enough of them. If
anything would reconcile me to a permanent residence in the tropics, it
would be the hope of always having plenty of mangosteens at my command.

"You may think," Fred added, "that I have taken a good deal of space for
describing this fruit, but I assure you I have not occupied half what it
deserves. And if you were here, you would agree with me, and be willing
to give it all the space at your command--in and beyond your mouth. B