Temperate,
chaste fruit! you mean neither luxury nor sloth, neither satiety nor
indolence, neither enervating heats nor the Frigid Zones. Uncloying
fruit, fruit whose best sauce is the open air, whose finest flavors
only he whose taste is sharpened by brisk work or walking knows;
winter fruit, when the fire of life burns brightest; fruit always a
little hyperborean, leaning towards the cold; bracing, sub-acid, active
fruit. I think you must come from the north, you are so frank and
honest, so sturdy and appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the
northern races. Your quality is Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous
south is not akin to you. Not spices or olives or the sumptuous liquid
fruits, but the grass, the snow, the grains, the coolness is akin to
you. I think if I could subsist on you or the like of you, I should
never have an intemperate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or
despondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute your quality I
should be cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived,
and should shed warmth and contentment around.
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