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A QUIET AFTERNOON
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and the comfort of a perfect temperature. Great is weather. No man is to blame for talking about it, unless his talk is twaddle. Out-of-door people know that few things are more important. A quail's whistle, a thought too strenuous, perhaps, for such an hour,—a breezy quoit,—breaks my disquisition none too soon; else I might have been brought in guilty under my own ruling.

As I get over the fence, on my start homeward, I notice a thrifty clump of chokecherry shrubs on the other side of the way, hung with ripening clusters, every cherry a jewel as the sun strikes it. They may hang "for all me," as schoolboys say. My country-bred taste is pretty catholic in matters of this kind, but it extends not to chokecherries. They should be eaten by campaign orators as a check upon fluency.