After some time spent in this delightful place, we passed through the open window on to the marble terrace. A stairway of artistically finished marble wound gracefully down from this terrace to the lawn beneath the trees, no pathway of any kind approaching at its foot—only the flowery turf. The fruit-laden branches of the trees hung within easy reach from the terrace, and I noticed as I stood there that morning seven varieties. One kind resembled our fine Bartlett pear, only much larger, and infinitely more delicious to the taste, as I soon found. Another variety was in clusters, the fruit also pear-shaped, but smaller than the former, and of a consistency and flavor similar to the finest frozen cream. A third, something like a banana in shape, they called bread-fruit; it was not unlike our dainty finger-rolls to the taste. It seemed to me at the time, and really proved to be so, that in variety and excellence, food for the most elegant repast was here provided without labor or care. My brother gathered some of the different varieties and bade me try them. I did so with much relish and refreshment. Once the rich juice from the pear-like fruit (whose distinctive name I have forgotten, if indeed I ever knew it,) ran out profusely over my hands and the front of my dress. "Oh!" I cried, "I have ruined my dress, I fear!"
My brother laughed genially, as he said, "Show me the stains."
To my amazement not a spot could I find.
"Look at your hands," he said.
I found them clean and fresh; as though just from the bath.
"What does it mean? My hands were covered with the thick juice of the fruit."
"Simply," he answered, "that no impurity can remain for an instant in this air. Nothing decays, nothing tarnishes, or in any way disfigures or mars the universal purity or beauty of the place. As fast as the fruit ripens and falls, all that is not immediately gathered at once evaporates, not even the seed remaining."
I had noticed that no fruit lay beneath the trees—this, then, was the reason for it.
"'And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defiled!,'" I quoted thoughtfully.
"Yes, even so," he answered; "even so."