“We shall have to try again,” said I.

We did try again.

“Mine was a good deal of both this time,” said Halicarnassus.  “But we will give them a fair trial.”

“Yes,” said I, sepulchrally.

We sat there sacrificing ourselves to abstract right for five minutes.  Then I leaned back in my chair, and looked at Halicarnassus.  He rested his right elbow on the table, and looked at me.

“Well,” said he, at last, “how are cherries and things?”

“Halicarnassus,” said I, solemnly, “it is my firm conviction that farming is not a lucrative occupation.  You have no certain assurance of return, either for labor or capital invested.  Look at it.  The bugs eat up the squashes.  The worms eat up the apples.  The cucumbers won’t grow at all.  The peas have got lost.  The cherries are bitter as wormwood and sour as you in your worst moods.  Everything that is good for anything won’t grow, and everything that grows isn’t good for anything.”

“My Indian corn, though,” began Halicarnassus; but I snapped him up before he was fairly under way.  I had no idea of travelling in that direction.

“What am I to do with all those baskets that I bought, I should like to know?” I asked, sharply.

“What did you buy them for?” he asked in return.

“To send cherries to the Hudsons and the Mavericks and Fred Ashley,” I replied promptly.

“Why don’t you send ’em, then?  There’s plenty of them,—­more than we shall want.”

“Because,” I answered, “I have not exhausted the pleasures of friendship.  Nor do I perceive the benefit that would accrue from turning life-long friends into life-long enemies.”

“I’ll tell you what we can do,” said Halicarnassus.  “We can give a party and treat them to cherries.  They’ll have to eat ’em out of politeness.”

“Halicarnassus,” said I, “we should be mobbed.  We should fall victims to the fury of a disappointed and enraged populace.”

“At any rate,” said he, “we can offer them to chance visitors.”

The suggestion seemed to me a good one,—­at any rate, the only one that held out any prospect of relief.  Thereafter, whenever friends called singly or in squads,—­if the squads were not large enough to be formidable,—­we invariably set cherries before them, and with generous hospitality pressed them to partake.  The varying phases of emotion which they exhibited were painful to me at first, but I at length came to take a morbid pleasure in noting them.  It was a study for a sculptor.  By long practice I learned to detect the shadow of each coming change, where a casual observer would see only a serene expanse of placid politeness.  I knew just where the radiance, awakened by the luscious, swelling, crimson globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty, glared into perplexity, fired into rage.  I saw the grimace, suppressed as soon as begun, but not less patent to my preternaturally keen eyes.  No one deceived me by being suddenly seized with admiration of a view.  I knew it was only to relieve his nerves by making faces behind the window-curtains.