He used to follow me to see if I obeyed his orders, and one day when I had been persuaded by some boys of our neighborhood to go and bathe in the forbidden hours, he found me in the pond, led me home, and, cutting two tough peartree switches about the thickness, at the butt, of his forefinger, he took me down into the cellar, and making me strip off my jacket, broke them up to the stumps over my back, protected only by a cotton shirt.

"A peartree grows from the seed of a pear.

The wood of the Peartree is in great esteem for picture frames, it receiving a stain better than almost any other timber known.