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I leave you to judge how we opened our ears to his lessons. When we arrived in the course of our new studies at the pylorus, of which we had none of us ever heard before, our professor, in warning us, as I have done you, of the dangers of imprudent gluttony, related, as an instance, the case of a lady who had inadvertently swallowed a peach-stone.

Though the weather was moderately warm in Paris that week he wore red woolen wristlets down over his hands; and he wore also celluloid cuffs, which rattled musically, with very large moss agate buttons in them; and for ornamentation his watch chain bore a flat watch key, a secret order badge big enough to serve as a hitching weight and a peach-stone carved to look like a fruit basket.

I have allowed myself the little treat of this episode, and if I have had the good fortune to amuse you at all during our progress, you must not cavil at this piece of self-indulgence. And now we have done just what the peach-stone did; we, too, have passed the barrier, and are out of the stomach, but still we have not yet come to the end of our tale.

Randolph, the American, very tall and thin, as if a stick instead of shoulders stretched out his coat; his hair tied behind with a black ribbon, but not pigtailed, it flows from the ribbon, like old Steele's, with a curl at the end, mixed brown and gray; his face wrinkled like a peach-stone, but all pliable, muscles moving with every sensation of a feeling soul and lively imagination; quick dark eyes, with an indefinable expression of acquired habitual sedateness, in despite of nature; his tone of voice mild and repressed, yet in this voice he speaks thoughts that breathe and words that burn; he is one of the most eloquent men I ever heard speak, and there is a novelty in his view of things, and in his new world of allusions, in art and nature, which is highly interesting.

If such is his duty in regard to a thing so insignificant as a peach-stone, how much more urgent is this duty, when there is at stake something so great and sacred as the independence and honor of your empire and policy!"

The peach-stone had engrossed his attention this morning, and he had unsealed only one of the papers; the emperor had read only the report of the secret police on the events of the previous day.

The curate nosed it out like a slot-hound; he paced the track himself from the scrub to the peach-tree, and stood under this last gazing to its top, from there to its roots; he shook his head many times, stroked his chin a few: then with a broken cry he made a pounce and picked up a peach-stone! After this to doubt would have been childish; as a fact he had no more than the boys.

'Well, you have something like a garden! I said, overpowered with admiration not untouched by envy. 'Yes, answered the missionary, 'it is a very good garden, and has well repaid my labour; but it is the climate that I have to thank. If you stick a peach-stone into the ground it will bear fruit the fourth year, and a rose-cutting will bloom in a year. It is a lovely clime.

"Splendid, aint they?" she said, at length, leaning forward and tossing a peach-stone out of the window, while she searched the golden and crimson heap with her disengaged hand for another peach, mellow and juicy as the last. "I had no idea anything on earth could be so delightful. We had breakfast so early, and I do believe I was almost hungry.

This fruit grows everywhere, it matters not whether the soil be rich or poor; and if a peach-stone is planted it will in three years afterwards bear an abundant crop of fruit.