Categories
1840s Short Story

The Best Peach

By Author Unknown with annotations by Josh Benjamin

The Best Peach

By Author Unknown
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Pierre Joseph Redouté. Persica vulgaris. Pêcher commun. (Peach on a branch).
Print, circa 1801 to 1819, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Last evening, (I continued,) I took supper with Lydia’s father and mother. Before supper, Lydia, her parents, and myself, were sitting in the room together, and her little brother Oliver was out in the yard, drawing his cart about. The mother went out and brought in some peaches; a few of which were large, red-cheeked rare-ripes—the best small, ordinary peaches. The father handed me one of the rare-ripes, gave one to the mother, and then one of the best to his little daughter, who was eight years old. He then took one of the smaller ones, and gave it to Lydia, and told her to go and give it to her brother. He was four years old. Lydia went out, and was gone out about ten minutes, and then came in. 

“Did you give your brother the peach I sent him?” asked the father.

Lydia blushed, turned away, and did not answer.

“Did you give your brother the peach I sent him?” asked the father again, a little more sharply.

“No, father,” said she, “I did not give him that.”

“What did you do with it?” he asked.

“I ate it,” said Lydia,

“What! Did you not give your brother any?” asked the father. 

“Yes, I did, father,” said she. “I gave him mine.”

“Why did you not give him the one I told you to give?” asked the father, rather sternly.

“Because, father,” said Lydia, “I thought he would like mine better.”

“But you ought not to disobey your father,” said he.

“I did not mean to be so disobedient, father,” said she; and her bosom began to heave, and her chin to quiver.”

“But you were, my daughter,” said he.

“I thought you would not be displeased with me, father,” said Lydia, “if I did give brother the biggest peach;” and the tears began to roll down her cheeks. 

“But I wanted you to have the biggest,” said the father; “you are older and larger than he is.”

“I want you to give the best things to brother,” said the noble girl.

“Why?” asked the father, scarcely able to contain himself.

“Because,” answered the dear, generous sister, “I love him so—I always feel best when he gets the best things.”

“You are right, my precious daughter,” said the father, as he fondly and proudly folded her in his arms. “You are right, and you may be certain your happy father can never be displeased with you for wishing to give up the best of every thing to your affectionate little brother. He is a dear and noble little boy, and I am glad you love him so. Do you think he loves you as well as you do him?”

“Yes father,” said the girl, “I think he does; for when I offered him the largest peach, he would not take it, and wanted me to keep it; and it was a good while before I could get him to take it.”

“Stories for Children: The best peach.” Massachusetts ploughman 5, no. 39, (JUNE 1846): 4.
Contexts

Massachusetts Ploughman was a weekly newspaper published in Boston from 1841 to 1866. It evolved from Yankee Farmer, and Newsletter, which was published in Portland, Maine, and Boston in 1838, which became Yankee Farmer, and New England Cultivator from 1839 to 1840. The Yankee Farmer split off to an independent Boston newspaper for the beginning of 1841; after 1866 it was known as Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture until 1906, when it combined with Boston Cultivator and Vermont Farmer to become American Cultivator until its end in 1915.

White agricultural families in New England at this time were experiencing the shifts that industrialization was causing for farm households, including significant changes for women. In an 1851 town centennial address to farmers in Litchfield County, Connecticut, Horace Bushnell predicted, “This transition from mother- and daughter-power to water- and steam-power is a great one, greater by far than many have as yet begun to conceive—one that is to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life and social manners” (Bidwell 694). Women increasingly found employment outside the farm “by their leaving the farms and taking employment in the rapidly growing urban centres, either in factories, or as school teachers, or in domestic service; [or] by the introduction of new industrial occupations in the home” (Bidwell 696).

Women in agricultural families often suffered greatly; see these few passages below as examples:

“Whatever general hardships, such as poverty, isolation, lack of labor-saving devices, may exist on any given farm, the burden of these hardships falls more heavily on the farmer’s wife than on the farmer himself. In general her life is more monotonous and the more isolated, no matter what the wealth or the poverty of the family may be.” —Report of the Commission on Country Life, 1911

“The farmers’ wives! what monotonous, treadmill lives! Constant toil with no wages, no allowance, no pocket money, no vacations, no pleasure trips to the city nearest them, little of the pleasures of correspondence; no time to write, unless a near relative is dead or dying. Some one says that their only chance for social life is going to some insane asylum!” —Kate Sanborn, Adopting an Abandoned Farm, 1891

“When you bring to bear on these poor, weak souls, made for love and gentleness and bright outlooks [, the effects of] the daily dullness of work, the brutality, stupidness, small craft, and boorish tyranny of husbands, to whom they are tied beyond escape, what wonder is it that a third of all the female lunatics in our asylums are farmers’ wives? that domestic tragedies, even beyond the scope of a sensation novel, recur daily in these lonely houses, far beyond human help or hope?” —Rose Terry Cooke, “The West Shetucket Railway,” 1872.

Resources for Further Study

css.php