room, plate in hand, regarding your peach as if it were some great
natural curiosity. A sudden jog of your elbow compels you to a
succession of most dexterous balancings as your heavy peach rolls from
side to side, knocks down your knife, and threatens to plunge after it
when you stoop to regain it. You look distractedly round for a table,
but all are occupied. Even the corner of the mantel-shelf holds a
plate, and you enviously see the owner thereof leaning carelessly
against the chimney, and looking placidly round upon his less
fortunate companions. You glance at the different groups to see if any
one else is in your most unenviable predicament. Ah, yes! Yonder
stands a gentleman worse off yet, for, in addition to your
perplexities, he is talking with a young, laughing girl, who is
watching his movements, with a merry twinkle in her bright eyes. He
evidently wishes to astonish her by his dexterity, and disappoint her
roguish expectations. He holds his plate firmly in his left hand, and
proceeds, at once, to cut his peach in halves. Deuce take the blunt
silver knife! The tough skin resists its pressure. The knife and plate
clash loudly together; the peach is bounding and rolling at the very
feet of the young lady, who is in an ecstasy of laughter. Ah! she
herself has no small resemblance to a peach, fair, beautiful, and
attractive without, and, I sadly fear, with a hard heart beneath.

Are you yet more miserable than before? Turn then to yonder
sober-looking gentleman, who certainly seems sufficiently composed to
perform the difficult manoeuvre. He has the advantage of a table to be
sure; but that is not every thing. He begins right, by deliberately
removing the woolly skin. Now he lays the slippery peach in his plate,
and makes a plunge at it with his knife. A sharp, prolonged screech
across his plate salutes the ears of all the bystanders, and a fine
slice of juicy pulp is flung unceremoniously into the face of the