Page:Letters of Life.djvu/286

274 trees, showered their fruitage both white and red, raspberries luxuriated upon their espaliers, and a large expanse was allotted to the luscious strawberry. We had at a little distance a field where the tasselled maize grew lovingly with the potato, and a pasture where our cows took their clover meals, repaying us in a barter-traffic of cream and golden butter. Our poultry peopled their territory with a prolific zeal, and munificently gave us their eggs, their offspring, and themselves.

Our trees, of the peach, pear and apple, apricot and cherry genus, were so exuberant in their gifts, that neither by usufruct, or donation, could they be always expended. The resource was in casting them to a class of retainers whose name, for some reason or other, perhaps for none at all, is scarcely admissible to ears polite. Nevertheless, having very comfortable quarters, with a fortified area, where they might enjoy the air and sun, and being kept scrupulously neat, they were not disagreeable objects, especially when the before-named dessert was distributed. They exhibited unmingled delight in partaking of it, cracking the peach-stones to extract the aromatic kernels, and looking up at their benefactors with some degree of intelligence. We did not scorn the comfort of this subsidiary part of our establishment, who in return added condiments to our board, and their hams were thought to have derived flavor from the peaches that had nourished