Durian

“ King Tharawadi used to lay post-horses from Martaban to Ava, to bring his odoriferous delicacy."—Yule, Mission to Ava, 161. 1878.—"The Durian will grow as large as a man's head, is covered closely with terribly sharp spines, set hexagonally upon its hard skin, and when ripe it falls; if it should strike any one under the tree, severe injury or death may be the result."—M‘Nair, Perak, 60. ”

“ The fruit, especially when not fresh from the tree, has, notwithstanding, a most offensive smell, which has been compared to that of rotten onions or of putrid animal matter. The Dyaks of the Sarawak river in Borneo esteem the durian above all other fruit, eat it unripe both cooked and raw, and salt the pulp for use as a relish with rice. ”

“ I never saw the “good” “durian” growing wild in Sarawak, but I tasted here a small wild kind with an orange centre which made me violently sick. No description of the “durian” taste can do it justice. But its smell is also past description. It is so bad that many people refuse to taste it. It is a very large and heavy fruit, covered with strong, sharp spines, and as it grows on a very tall tree, it is dangerous to walk underneath in the fruiting season when they are falling, accidents being common among the Dayaks through this cause. ”

“ The durian is about two-thirds the size of a jacca, and like it is encased in a thick and prickly rind, which protects it from the teeth of squirrels and other nibblers; on opening it there are to be found ten cells, each containing a kernel larger than a date, and surrounded by a sort of white, or sometimes yellowish, cream, which is most delicious. ”

“ It would not, perhaps, be correct to say that the Durian is the best of all fruits, because it cannot supply the place of the subacid juicy kinds, such as the orange, grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose refreshing and cooling qualities are so wholesome and grateful; but as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour, it is unsurpassed. ”

“ The Durian grows on a large and lofty forest tree, somewhat resembling an elm in its general character, but with a more smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round or slightly oval, about the size of a large cocoanut, of a green colour, and covered all over with short stout spines the bases of which touch each other, and are consequently somewhat hexagonal, while the points are very strong and sharp. It is so completely armed, that if the stalk is broken off it is a difficult matter to lift one from the ground. ”

“ When the fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under the trees. When a Durian strikes a man in its fall, it produces a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing open the flesh, while the blow itself is very heavy ”

“ The Dyaks roast fowls without removing the feathers, tear them joint from joint, and so eat them. They have a most extraordinary liking for viands in a nearly putrid state, such as fish or molluscs in a very advanced state of decomposition, eggs black from age, and rotten fruit, the chief being the durian, which smells like all the other dishes put together, but with a sort of peculiar fragrance of its own. Even foreigners have learned to like the durian, but they have not found that it acclimatizes them to the bad eggs, burnt feathers, and very high fish. ”

“ Arch. i. 419.) [Wallace (Malay Arch. 57) says that he could not bear the smell when he "first tried it in Malacca, but in Borneo I found a ripe fruit on the ground, and, eating it out of doors, I at once became a confirmed Durian eater ... the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact to eat Durians is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience."] Our forefathers had not such delicate noses, as may be gathered from some of the older notices. A Governor of the Straits, some forty-five years ago, used to compare the Dorian to 'carrion in custard.' ”

“ When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way to eat Durians in perfection is to get them as they fall; and the smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes a very good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the Dyaks raw. In a good fruit season large quantities are preserved salted, in jars and bamboos, and kept the year round, when it acquires a most disgusting odour to Europeans, but the Dyaks appreciate it highly as a relish with their rice. There are in the forest two varieties of wild Durians with much smaller fruits, one of them orange-coloured inside; ”

“ I wonder if the ‘dorian’, if that is the name of it, is another superstition, like the peepul tree. There was a great abundance and variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian was never in evidence. It was never the season for the dorian. It was always going to arrive from Burma sometime or other, but it never did. By all accounts it was a most strange fruit, and incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the smell. Its rind was said to exude a stench of so atrocious a nature that when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a polecat was a refreshment. ”

“ His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth – I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? ”

“ Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek. He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.
The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms. ”

“ If ever a man was a believer irrespective of Church, Creed, or sect—Dürer was he. I confess to a sense of awe in beholding this work, akin to Fra Angelico in its sincerity, akin to Michelangelo in its grandeur, and German wholly in the naturalness of its mystery. With more than photographic sharpness and minuteness of detail does Dürer materialise the vision: God-Father, an aged King—a Charlemagne ”

“ Don’t keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands.”
Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. “You are quite right to do that,” he murmured. “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” ”

“ As the glass door closed behind Dorian, Lord Henry turned and looked at the Duchess with his slumberous eyes. "Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.
She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "I wish I knew," she said at last.
He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
"One may lose one's way." ”

“ Dorian looked critically back and forth. "The sky is redder," be decided.
"And yet if I make my picture as red as the sky naturally is, many people would say that it is too red to be true. I'll risk it anyway." Then she carefully laid on a little more color.
"Nature itself, our teacher told us, is always more intense than any representation of nature."
She worked on in silence for a few moments, then without looking from her canvas, she asked: "Do you like being a farmer?"
"Oh, I guess so," he replied somewhat indefinitely. "I've lived on a farm all my life, and I don't know anything else. ”

“ With the passage of every minute he realised more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance. A man not very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always the inheritor of the other places,—how much more it meant to him than to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as clearly? It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa; the sunlight blazed upon desert and river; not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of any bush. Calder drank his brandy-and-soda, and slowly that question forced itself more and more into the front of his mind. ”

“ It is a great-coat that softens to us the heat of the day, and the cold of the night. It carries sounds to our ears and smells to our nostrils. Its movements fill Nature with ceaseless change; and without their aid in wafting ships over the sea, commerce and civilization would have been scarce possible. It is of all wonders the most wonderful.'"
At another time when Dorian had a cold, and consequently, a loss of appetite, his mother urged him to eat more, saying that he must have strength to throw off his cold. ”

“ Dorian fetched him the volume.
"When I read Drummond's work," continued the old man, "I feel keener than ever my lack of scientific knowledge. I have always had a desire to delve into nature's laws through the doors of botany, zoology, mineralogy, chemistry, and all the other sciences. I have obtained a smattering only through my reading. I realize that the great ocean of truth is yet before me who am now an old man and can never hope in this life to explore much further."
"But how is it, Uncle Zed," enquired Dorian, "that so many scientists have such little faith?" ”

“ A few rare references made in unusual moments of confidence by Durrance had only informed Calder of her name, and assured him that his friend would be very glad to change it if he could. He looked at Durrance—a man so trained to vigour and activity that his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than an accident of the country in which he lived; a man, too, who came to the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who comes into an inheritance; a man to whom these desolate tracts were home, and the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads merely the other places ”

“ It seemed it would not be long for the end.
"Dorian."
"Yes, Uncle Zed, can I do anything for you?"
"No"—barely above a whisper—"nothing else matters—you're a good boy—God bless you."
The dying man lay very still. As Dorian looked at the face of his friend it seemed that the mortal flesh had become waxen white so that the immortal spirit shone unhindered through it. The young man's heart was deeply sorrowful, but it was a sanctified sorrow. Twice before had death come near to him. He had hardly realized that of his father's and he was not present when Mildred had passed away ”

“ What would be the music of the spheres to one bereft of hearing? What gain would come to a man with a heart of stone to be in an environment of perfect and eternal love!"
Dorian finished the reading and laid the paper on the desk. For some time he sat very still, thinking of these beautiful words from his dear friend to him. Surely, Uncle Zed was very much alive in any environment which his beautiful life had placed him. Would that he, Dorian, could live so that he might always be alive to the good and be dead to sin. ”

“ He turned, hair brush in hand, and saw Dorian. "Hello, Dorian," he greeted, "you're quite a stranger. You'll come along to meetin' with Carlia, I suppose. We will be late if we don't hurry."
"Father, I told you I'm not going. I—" she hesitated as if not quite certain of her words—"I had to chase all over the hills for the cows, and I'm not through milking yet. Then there are the pigs and the calves and the horses to feed. But I'll not keep Dorian. You had better go with father"—this to the young man who still stood by the kitchen door. ”

“ One knows Durrance. Give him a camp-fire in the desert, and a couple of sheiks to sit round it with him, and he'll buck to them for a month and never feel bored at the end. While here there are letters, and there's an office, and there's a desk in the office and everything he loathes and can't do with. You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though he won't hurry about it. ”

“ In that little lodge there was no electricity, and the glow of the oil lamps played curious tricks with the human expression which frequently resulted in something unhuman. It may have been the dusk of night, the flickering of the lamps, but Arthur Duryea had certainly noticed how his father's eyes had sunken further into his head, and how his cheeks were tighter, and the outline of his teeth pressed into the skin about his lips. ”

“ As higher and higher it climbed the sky, one by one there leapt from the earth beneath each stone an aged Druid all clothed in white, with long waving grey locks and beard, and crowned with garlands of oak leaves, holly, laurels, and mistletoe. When the circle of Druids was quite complete the old rascal who had lured me from my shop, and who now appeared to be their chief, stepped towards me, now far too bewildered and astounded to resist, and solemnly placed upon my brow a wreath of wild violets. ”

“ A number of cows stood knee-deep in mud and water, round as barrels, and breathing hard, with tails unceasingly switching away the flies.
Dorian was in the field turning the water on his lucerne patch when he saw Mildred coming as usual down the path. He had not expected her that afternoon as he thought the picture which she had been working on was finished; but after adjusting the flow of water, he joined her, relieving her of stool and easel. They then walked on together, the big farm boy in overalls and the tall graceful girl in the enveloping gingham. ”