last peach"
belonged to "Blakesmoor," the fine old family-mansion of the Plummers of
Hertfordshire, in whose family Lamb's maternal grandmother--"the
grandame" of his poem of that name, and the "great-grandmother Field" of
Elia's "Dream-Children"--was housekeeper for many years.

THE LAST PEACH.

I am the miserablest man living. Give me counsel, dear Editor. I was
bred up in the strictest principles of honesty, and have passed my life
in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained
in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day coming to the
gallows.

Till the latter end of last autumn, I never experienced these feelings
of self-mistrust, which ever since have embittered my existence. From
the apprehension of that unfortunate man[E] whose story began to make so
great an impression upon the public about that time, I date my horrors.
I never can get it out of my head that I shall some time or other commit
a forgery, or do some equally vile thing. To make matters worse, I am in
a banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster of bank-notes. These
were formerly no more to me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now
as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and
pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out,
and scraping up with my little tin shovel, (at which I was the most
expert in the banking-house,) now scald my hands. When I go to sign my
name, I set down that of another person, or write my own in a
counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I
want no more wealth than I possess. A more contented being than myself,
as to money-matters, exists not. What should I fear?

When a child, I was once let loose, by favor of a nobleman's gardener,
into his Lordship's magnificent fruit-garden, with full leave to pull
the currants and the gooseberries; only I was interdicted from touching
the wall-fruit. Indeed, at that season (it was the end of autumn) there
was little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot feel of
the brick-work?) lingered the one last peach. Now peaches are a fruit
which I always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There
is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavor
of them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was
haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as
I would from the spot, I found myself still recu