The Eastern Belle bore a large, long pear that turned
yellow when ripe and had a fine rosy cheek on one side. The Indian Queen
was a thick-bodied pear with specks under the skin, a deep-sunk nose and
a long stem. It had a tendency to crack on one side; but it ripened at
about the same time as the Belle, and its flavor was even finer.
The little walled pen that inclosed the two pear-trees had a history of
its own. The town had built it as a "pound" for stray animals in 1822,
shortly after the neighborhood was settled. The walls were six or seven
feet high, and on one side was a gateway. The inclosure was only twenty
feet wide by thirty feet long. It had not been used long as a pound, for
a pound that was larger and more centrally situated became necessary
soon after it was built. When those two little pear-trees came from
Connecticut the old Squire set them out inside this walled pen; he
thought they would be protected by the high pound wall. A curious
circumstance about those pear-trees was that they did not begin bearing
when they were nine or ten years old, as pear-trees usually do. Year
after year passed, until they had stood there twenty-seven years, with
never blossom or fruit appearing on them.
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