file majestically past my house to my neighbor's well. I have resolved
to plant a strawberry-bed next year, and offer them the fruit of it by
way of atonement, and never, under any provocation, hereafter, to assert
or insinuate that I have any claim whatever to anything under the sun.
If this course, perseveringly persisted in, does not restore the state
of quo, I am hopeless. I have no further resources.

The one drop of sweetness in the bitter cup was, that the cherries,
being thus let severely alone, were allowed to hang on the trees and
ripen. It took them a great while. If they had been as big as hogsheads,
I should think the sun might have got through them sooner than he did.
They looked ripe long before they were so; and as they were very
plenty, the trees presented a beautiful appearance. I bought a stack of
fantastic little baskets from a travelling Indian tribe, at a fabulous
price, for the sake of fulfilling my long-cherished design of sending
fruit to my city friends. After long waiting, Halicarnassus came in one
morning with a tin pail full, and said that they were ripe at last, for
they were turning purple and falling off; and he was going to have them
gathered at once. He had brought in the first-fruits for breakfast. I
put them in the best preserve-dish, twined it with myrtle, and set it
in the centre of the table. It looked charming,--so ruddy and rural and
Arcadian. I wished we could breakfast out-doors; but the summer was one
of unusual severity, and it was hardly prudent thus to brave its rigor.
We had cup-custards at the close of our breakfast that morning,--very
vulgar, but very delicious. We reached the cherries at the same moment,
and swallowed the first one simultaneously. The effect was instantaneous
and electric. Halicarnassus puckered his face into a perfect wheel,
with his mouth for the hub. I don't know how I looked, but I felt badly
enough.