To be sure, the whole air will be
sweetened, but there will be no Mrs. Laudersdale."
"For shame, Mrs. Purcell!" cried Marguerite. "You're not sweet-tempered,
or you'd like sweet dainties yourself. Here are nuts swathed in syrup;
you'll have none of them? Here are health and slumber and idle dreams
in a chocolate-drop. Not a chocolate? Here are dates; if you wouldn't
choose the things in themselves, truly you would for their associations?
See, when you take up one, what a picture follows it: the plum that has
swung at the top of a palm and crowded into itself the glow of those
fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped
in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense
tent of a heaven full of light,--always below and around, long level
reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have
hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it
has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus--that city the most
beautiful--on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the
seas,--and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom,
torrid winds, and fervid suns!"
"I might swallow the date," said Mrs.
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