views, and found myself in a den of lions, and was thankful to come out second-best.  Second? nay, third-best, fourth-best, no best at all, not even good,—­very bad.  In short, I was glad to get out with my life.  Nor was my repulse confined to the passing hour.  The injured innocents come no more for water.  I am consumed with inward remorse as I see them daily 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.

“It was unfortunate that we had custards this morning,” I remarked.  “They are so sweet that the cherries seem sour by contrast.  We shall soon get the sweet taste out of our mouths, however.”

“That’s so!” said Halicarnassus, who will be coarse.

We tried another.  He exhibited a similar pantomime, with improvements.  My feelings were also the same, intensified.

“I am not in luck to-day,” I said, attempting to smile.  “I got hold of a sour cherry this time.”

“I got hold of a bitter one,” said Halicarnassus.

“Mine was a little bitter, too,” I added.

“Mine was a little sour, too,” said Halicarnassus.