fit to eat till they were at least half rotten.

His nephews and nieces were of a decidedly different opinion, but
did not like to debate the subject with him; so they had recourse to
a little trick. I don't think it was quite right. The Squire was in
the habit every day of gathering the ripe fruit in baskets, and
putting it in what he called especially his room; it was a sort of
half dressing, half business room. Here it was that he kept the pole
upon which he placed me at night. These baskets of fruit, if the
good man had had his own way, would have remained there till they
were all rotten like the heaps of windfalls which was the fruit he
told the family, and the children especially, they might eat.

Now it was the custom of two or three roguish boys and girls, who
visited him, to gather baskets of this rotten fruit, and when the
good man had gone to bed, to carry them into this room, and put them
in the place of the baskets of sound ripe fruit, which they took for
themselves and others to eat.

In a day or two, the good Squire would look at his baskets, and,
finding the fruit decaying, would call it fit to eat, bring it into
the parlor, and then call in the children, and say to them, "Here,
boys and girls, here is nice ripe fruit for you; you can just cut
out the rotten with your penknives;" and then he would distribute it
among them.

The little monkeys, of course, could scarce repress their giggles.

I can make no apology for their cheat, except that, upon this point,
the good man was really childish; and, as he did not eat the fruit
himself, or sell it, or do any thing with it, but give to the pigs
what was not eaten in the family, no one was wronged by the trick.
It was, in fact, a piece of sport.

As you see, I had the benefit of being present at the whole of the
fun; and I can hear now, it seems to me, as plainly as I did then,
the suppressed laughter of these roguish children when they came
into the room where I was, to exchange baskets of rotten for baskets
of sound fruit.

In his eighty-seventh year, the old man ran a race with one of these
children, and contrived, by an artifice, to win it. She got before
him; when, fearing he would hurt himself, she stopped to look after
him; he came up to her; and then, just pushing her back a little,
got before her to the goal, which was very near them. How he did
shout, as though he were only twenty, and what a hitch he gave me on
the occasion!

In his ninet