but as a rule their fruit was not so good as that which is produced from wall-trained peach-trees in England. In one colonial garden we found a fruit that was new to us, in which, though two kinds were united, yet each was in perfection—to wit, a completely-formed sweet almond, covered outwardly not with its own insipid green rind, but with the ripened pulp of a full-flavoured peach. The tree that bore this dual crop was a solitary specimen. As to the seasons when our different fruits came in,—the figs ripened in the end of November, apricots at Christmas, grapes in January, and peaches in February. The grapes lasted until the end of February, and as the peaches were then over also, there followed a fast from fruit through many months, during which the common English jams were much prized, and expensive in proportion. I soon ceased to feel surprised that the colonial ladies should expend time and sugar in producing such a poor preserve as that made from green grapes.
The composition of a pudding was so vexed a question in the dearth of materials, that a neighbour who deprecated my contempt for grape jam did "nothing exaggerate" in asserting as a good reason for making it, that "half the year round one scarcely knew what to set upon the dinner-table," that is, as second course. Under these circumstances we had recourse to a large field-melon, called the pig or cattle melon, which, in spite of its natural insipidity, produced, when largely helped out with vinegar and sugar and baked under a crust, an imitation by no means despicable of apple-pie.
An immigrant girl who had been telling me that her admirer was "crazed for her at first sight," adduced in
