Pick out the finest, handling as little as may be, and pile upon a
salver or flat dish, with bits of ice between them, and ornament with
peach leaves or fennel sprigs.
One of the prettiest dishes of fruit I ever saw upon a dessert-table
was an open silver basket, wide at the top, heaped with rich red
peaches and yellow Bartlett pears, interspersed with feathery bunches
of green, which few of those who admired it knew for _carrot-tops_.
Wild white clematis wreathed the handle and showed here and there among
the fruit, while scarlet and white verbenas nestled amid the green.
Send around powdered sugar with the fruit, as many like to dip peaches
and pears in it after paring and quartering them.