The strawberry is one ov natur's sweet pets.
She makes them worth fifty cents, the fust she makes, and never allows
them tew be sold at a mean price.
The culler ov the strawberry iz like the setting sun under a thin cloud,
with a delicate dash of the rain bo in it; its fragrance iz like the
breath ov a baby, when it fust begins tew eat wintergreen lossingers;
its flavor is like the nektar which an old-fashioned goddess used tew
leave in the bottom ov her tumbler, when Jupiter stood treat on Mount
Ida.
There iz menny breeds ov this delightful vegetable, but not a mean one
in the whole lot.
I think i have stole them, laying around loose, without enny pedigree,
in sumboddy's tall grass, when I waz a lazy schoolboy, that eat dredful
easy, without enny white sugar on them, and even a bug occasionally
mixed with them in the hurry of the moment.
Cherrys are good, but they are too mutch like sucking a marble, with a
handle tew it.
Peaches are good, if yu don't git enny ov the pin-feathers into yure
lips.
Watermelons will suit ennyboddy who iz satisfied with halfsweetened
drink; but the man who can eat strawberrys besprinkled with crushed
shuggar, and besmattered with sweet cream, (at sumboddy else's expense),
and not lay hiz hand on hiz stummuk, and thank the author ov strawberrys
and stummuks, iz a man with a worn-out conscience--a man whose mouth
tastes like a hole in the ground, that don't care what goes down it.
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