CHERRIES.--They rivalled the apple-blooms in snowy profusion, and the branches were covered with tiny balls. The sun mounted warm and high in the heavens and they blushed under his ardent gaze. I felt an increasing conviction that here there would be no disappointment; but it soon became palpable that another class of depredators had marked our trees for their own. Little brown toes could occasionally be seen peeping from the foliage, and little bare feet left their print on the garden-soil. Humanity had evidently deposited its larva in the vicinity. There was a schoolhouse not very far away, and the children used to draw water from an old well in a distant part of the garden. It was surprising to see how thirsty they all became as the cherries ripened. It was as if the village had simultaneously agreed to breakfast on salt fish. Their wooden bucket might have been the urn of the Danaïdes, judging from the time it took to fill it. The boys were as fleet of foot as young zebras, and presented upon discovery no apology or justification but their heels,--which was a wise stroke in them. A troop of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little snips in white pantalets, caught in the act, reasoned with in a semi-circle, and cajoled with candy, were as sweet as distilled honey, and promised with all their innocent hearts and hands not to do so any more. But the real _pièce de résistance_ was a mass of pretty well developed crinoline which an informal walk in the infested district brought to light, engaged in a systematic raid upon the tempting fruit. Now, in my country, the presence of unknown individuals in your own garden, plucking your fruit from your trees, without your knowledge and against your will, is universally considered as affording presumptive evidence of--something. In this part of the world, however, I find they do things differently. It doesn't furnish presumptive evidence of anything. If you think it does, you do so at your own risk. I thought it did, and escaped by the skin of my teeth. I hinted my views, and found myself in a den of lions, and was thankful to come out second-best. Second? nay, third-best, fourth-best, no best at all, not even good,--very bad. In short, I was glad to get out with my life. Nor was my repulse confined to the passing hour. The injured innocents come no more for water. I am consumed with inward remorse as I see them daily file majestically past my house to my neighbor's well. I have resolved to plant a strawberry-bed next year, and offer them the fruit of it by way of atonement, and never, under any provocation, hereafter, to assert or insinuate that I have any claim whatever to anything under the sun. If this course, perseveringly persisted in, does not restore the state of quo, I am hopeless. I have no further resources.