Knowing how beneficial good ripe fruit is in assisting the process of digestion, and recognizing the fact that the human stomach is very apt to feel a craving for some food of a more or less acid character, I have greatly hoped, from the vast increase in the production of all kinds of fruits, as also the increased facilities for offering them to the consumer, that the temperance habit among the people, especially in the cities, would find herein a valuable auxiliary. To what extent it may have proved to be such, I have no knowledge, yet I have no doubt it has proved to be a determinate help in the direction stated.

It would probably be well, did the school-textbooks which treat of alcoholic stimulants and tobacco, showing their generally harmful effects, also point out how (as indicated above) the acid of many fruits is a good digestion aider, and will enter the blood and healthily assimilate with the tissues of the system in a way that alcohol and fermented liquids will not.

In walking from my office to the place where I proposed to take my early-afternoon lunch, some days ago, I passed a fruit stand well heaped with apples. A large, well patronized beer saloon was a few steps away. Reflecting how the seller of the fruit might do a better paying business than evidently was the case, it appeared to me that a good result might follow from labeling his wares. Thus, the "down town " office clerk or salesman, who may have fallen into the dangerous habit of taking a regular daily "nip," or several of them, at a wine or beer room, affecting to be a connoisseur in this or that favorite vintage, brand or brewing, might incline to let his choice in the matter of varieties run in a wiser and safer direction by turning his attention toward choice of fruits and their pleasing variety. A tendency of this sort would doubtless be stimulated, were quite a number of varieties of a single kind of fruit kept by the dealer, aiming to have as many sorts as possible in regular succession, and letting the name of each variety be seen. At present, the retail fruit dealer of the sidewalk stands, usually keeps but one or two kinds of apples, and their names never appear.

It would be an advantage to name the sorts as they come in season - the June Apple, Bough, Summer Pearmain, Early Harvest, Red Astrachan, Maiden's Blush - to be followed by other names pleasingly remembered by the city clerk as having been seen in books, but as to the connection of the most of which with the actual fruit he may be ignorant - the Greening, Bellflower, Baldwin, Pippin, Rambo, Nonesuch, Seek-no-further (called "Seeks" by the unsentimental commission man), Tallman's Sweet, Winesap, Northern Spy, Fallawater, and lastly, and late into the new spring's apple-blossoming time, those always-to-be-relied-on stand-bys, the Russet and the Sheepnose. What grateful recollections of a fond aunt does the last named of these bring up ! Specially fond she was of this particular variety of the best of fruits, and for months of every year the capacious dining-room closet was never without a basket of them. Why should I not act on my own suggestion, and to-morrow when the corner-stand of my Italian fruit-seller is visited, have ready for him in bold-faced, gothic capitals, the placard titles for his inviting little mounds of Bellflowers, Baldwins and "Seeks." The following from the Nation is worth repeating:

"Indeed, neither in the East nor in any part of Europe have I ever tasted apples to compare with those of Oregon. They have a richness and delicacy of flavor which must persuade any one that if apples were less abundant they would be considered superior in taste and fragrance to those tropical and semi-tropical fruits which are more highly valued because of their scarcity in our latitude. In most parts of the East, an apple is an apple, and few people know or care about the names of the different kinds; but an Oregonian would no more eat certain kinds of apples than he would a raw pumpkin. An epicure is not more particular in regard to his brands of wine than an Oregonian is in the choice of his favorite variety of apples; and there are half a dozen kinds which I have never seen at the East, and the systematic introduction of which in the New York market would make any dealer's fortune".

Philadelphia.