Ah! this mysterious taste for
fruit! In politics it has often occasioned infinite embarrassment.
At this critical moment the Aboriginal received information that,
although the eating of pine-apples had been utterly abolished, and
although it was generally supposed that a specimen of this fruit had
long ceased to exist in the country, nevertheless a body of persons,
chiefly consisting of the descendants of the Government gardeners who
had succeeded the foreign agents, and who had never lost their taste for
this pre-eminent fruit, had long been in the habit of secretly raising,
for their private eating, pine-apples from the produce of those suckers
which had originally excited such odium and occasioned such misfortunes.
Long practice, they said, and infinite study, had so perfected them in
this art that they now succeeded in producing pine-apples which, both
for size and flavour, were not inferior to the boasted produce of a
foreign clime. Their specimens verified their assertion, and the whole
nation were invited to an instant trial.
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