When the author of the most famous Love Song ever written, cried, “There is no new thing under the sun,” cigarettes, chewing-gum, the thermos-bottle and the “snapper” for fastening ladies’ frocks—(an indispensable thing when one has several hundred wives)—were yet to be invented.

Neither so far as we can learn, had Solomon who knew and could address in its own language every flower and tree in existence, ever heard of the Tutti-Frutti Tree.

There is to my certain belief only one tree in existence answering to that name, and I christened it myself. I am its Godfather.

In the heartmost heart of the fruitful Paradise of New Jersey stands a small but ancient stone cottage that has come to regard me as its lord, and on Squire Williams’ estate, whose verdant acres lie just outside my garden fence, grows the Tutti-Frutti Tree.

Once it was a young Apple Tree. It is still young, but as the result of a series of sap transfusions it is also several other kinds of tree, and when it grows up it will bear apples, quinces, two kinds of pears, peaches and, I believe, plums—almost everything in fact except Water Melons.

Some day a future Stevenson will immortalize it in verse something after this fashion,

It’s quite absurd, of course, but just suppose the Tree of Knowledge in that First Garden has been a Tutti-Frutti Tree instead of an Apple Tree! With seven separate kinds of fruit to choose from, all equally forbidden and, for that reason, equally desirable, how could Eve ever have decided which one to pluck?

And with Eve’s hesitation Sin would have been lost to the world!

Let us give thanks that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was not a Tutti-Frutti Tree.