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Updated: July 13, 2025
Young men lie flat on their faces, basking in the sun. A group of their elders are smoking around a buffalo skin on which they have just been playing a game of chance with cherry-stones. A lover and his mistress, perhaps, sit together under a shed of bark without uttering a word.
It paid me the compliment of contradicting the divination by cherry-stones. My glass said: 'Get behind the window-curtain; he won't pass the long lonely evening without coming back again to look at the house. I got behind the window-curtain, and waited with his letter in my hand. "The dismal Sunday light faded, and the dismal Sunday quietness in the street grew quieter still.
When he was old enough to play with the boys, and had lost all his own cherry-stones, he used to creep into the bags of his playfellows, fill his pockets, and, getting out without their noticing him, would again join in the game. One day, however, as he was coming out of a bag of cherry-stones, where he had been stealing as usual, the boy to whom it belonged chanced to see him.
These and other like garbage he declared to be the only food that might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so the eater must plant the pips of any apples or pears that he may have eaten, or any plum- stones, cherry-stones, and the like, or he would come near to incurring the guilt of infanticide.
It was, as a matter of fact, subsequent to his residence in Edinburgh that he wrote the poems for which he is now, and for which he will be longest, famous namely, his songs. The writer already referred to compares the composition of these songs to the carving of cherry-stones. They were, he says in effect, the amusement of a man who could do nothing better in literature!
Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written Paradise Lost should write such poor sonnets: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." A gentleman having said that a congé d'elire has not, perhaps, the force of a command, but may be considered only as a strong recommendation.
I remember the stern reply of a friend of mine when I asked him to go with me to a brilliant reception, "No! Man liveth not by biscuit-glace alone!" His heart was heavy for the steamed cherry-stones of Harvey and the stewed terrapin of Augustin. The speech of the gay world has almost ceased to be national. Every one speaks French sufficiently for all social requirements.
The change was, therefore, the direct and very natural consequence of his great change in life; but it is not the less typical of his loss of moral courage that he should have given up all larger ventures, nor the less melancholy that a man who first attacked literature with a hand that seemed capable of moving mountains, should have spent his later years in whittling cherry-stones.
Some of the advertisements with which Tony had filled up the gaps caused considerable mirth such as this: "A gentleman about to clear out his desk, begs to give notice that he will Sell by Auction to-morrow after `Lights out, all those rare and valuable articles, to wit: one and a half gross best cherry-stones, last year's, in excellent condition.
Reflections on Saint Hubert's stag Shoots a stag with cherry-stones; the wonderful effects of it Kills a bear by extraordinary dexterity; his danger pathetically described Attacked by a wolf, which he turns inside out Is assailed by a mad dog, from which he escapes The Baron's cloak seized with madness, by which his whole wardrobe is thrown into confusion.
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