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"Lord Ashfrith, your father's oldest brother, and next in line to the old Earl, was seated in the gun-room of the castle, sipping a brandy and soda, and carving a peach-stone. Twenty minutes before, you had brought the peaches in from the garden, and eaten them with him.
I asked, as I scratched away. "Daid, I reck'n!" and he blew away the peach-stone dust which had accumulated in the folds of his greasy vest. "Yes, I see it is dead. What killed it?" "Oh! just gone daid sort o' nat'ral daith, I reck'n." We had a pretty view this morning, three or four miles below Augusta, from the top of a tree-denuded Kentucky hill, some two hundred and fifty feet high.
The emperor hastened to brush away with his hands the small particles of the peach-stone that had remained on his shirt-bosom and his sleeve; but while he was doing this his brow darkened still more, and he cast a gloomy and defiant glance on the empress.
Up to this time, when Ceylon passed under our flag, it is to be observed that no progress whatever, not the least, had been made in mastering the peach-stone, that old central nuisance of the island. The little monster still crowed, and flapped his wings on his dunghill, as had been his custom always in the afternoon for certain centuries.
"Look, my dear friend," added the emperor, handing the cup to his consort, "I wished to make a little cup from this peach-stone and give it to Maria Louisa, who delights in such things; but when I had nearly finished it, I discovered suddenly that the peach-stone was crooked and not equally round on both sides.
On the evening of the day of the Translation of the Peach-stone, this tavern was full to suffocation. Stefano, the purple-faced host, in shirt and breeches, stood dealing the liquor from a tub. Two outlaws lay under the benches, partly for fear of a visit from the watch, partly because, having already fallen there once, they feared to fall there again if they rose.
The reader now understands why we described the Ceylonese man as a tiger-cat in his noblest division: for, after all, these dangerous gentlemen in the peach-stone are a more promising race than the silky and nerveless population surrounding them.
He was showing you how, in his boyhood, he had carved a watch-charm from a peach-stone, and you were close at his side when he suddenly fell over dead. Two years later, your Uncle Alaric, heir to the earldom since his older brother was out of the way, dropped dead at a hunt breakfast. You were seated next him." "Are you trying to insinuate that I had anything to do with these deaths?"
The postoffice occupied a vacated store, evidently not swept these six months past. The youthful master, with chair tilted back and his feet on an old washstand which did duty as office table, was listlessly whittling a finger-ring from a peach-stone; but shoving his feet along, he made room for me to write a postal card which I had brought for the purpose. "What is the matter with this town?"
But the poor stomach has had to suffer a martyrdom meantime, while the dispute was pending, and before the intruder has been winked at by the porter. I shall remember all my life the history of a peach-stone, which was related to me in 1831. Consequently, for the first time in the history of schools, a professor of natural history was added to the instructors of Latin and Greek.
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