It is with difficulty that one who comprehends the question can restrain his impatience when people talk about the danger of indulging in fruit in summer or at any other season. “Better leave an order on the doctor’s slate,” says the would-be wit, when his friend passes with a watermelon or some early apples or peaches. As spring and summer come along, fruit is altogether natural, even if it does come from a little further South. That is one of the advantages of having railroads. These unwise people who dare not eat fruit, or eat it sparingly, while they stick to their winter diet of meat, grease, pastry, coffee, etc., are the ones who have the cholera morbus and other equally ridiculous things. It sometimes happens that these good people have had a “scare” in this fashion: one eats an excessive meal of fat and lean meats, old vegetables, with _plenty of gravy_, etc., all hot and heating, and calculated to create a febrile condition of the system, and insure an “attack” of indigestion. He has also eaten a piece of watermelon or other fruit——the only pure, natural substance appropriate for the time he has swallowed for the day. If, under these circumstances, he is routed at midnight, he declares he will never eat another piece of melon as long as he lives! It may be that the fruit, if he ate liberally of it, was the exciting cause of the _clearing out_ that otherwise might not have taken place just then; if so, he should congratulate himself that he has been saved a later attack that might have cost him his life. Had he eaten double the quantity of fruit on an _empty stomach_, providing his system was in decent condition, there would have been no startling consequences. The stomach which refuses to accept raw fruit, or with which it does not “agree,” is like that of the drunkard which rebels against pure water. When anyone has become diseased to that degree the sooner he begins to reform his habits the better. In 1863 I was captured by the Confederates and marched out of Brazier City, La., and taken to Shreveport. When captured, I had diarrhœa——the result of a flesh-food diet, wine, and all the “good things of life.” The disease became chronic, and I was near dying. The melon season was on (it was in July), and in sheer desperation, ignorant of the benefits to result from it, rather expecting disaster, I ate freely of watermelon. For eight or ten days I took no other food or drink, but with this I filled myself twice a day, and a return to perfect health was the result; all trace of bowel trouble had disappeared. I have since had many opportunities for observing the benefit arising from the use of watermelon and _nothing else_, in diarrhœa, upon various persons, young and old, and I have never observed any harmful results from its use; though it is often made the scapegoat, as indicated above.