CHAPTER XXIX
MITCHELLA JARS
Cold weather was again approaching. October had been very wet; but bright, calm days of Indian summer followed in November. And about that time Catherine, Theodora and Ellen had an odd adventure while out in the woods gathering partridge berries.
At the old farm we called the vivid green creeping vine that bears those coral-red berries in November, "partridge berry," because partridge feed on the berries and dig them from under the snow. Botanists, however, call the vine Mitchella repens. In our tramps through the woods we boys never gave it more than a passing glance, for the berries are not good to eat. The girls, however, thought that the vine was very pretty. Every fall Theodora and Ellen, with Kate Edwards, and sometimes the Wilbur girls, went into the woods to gather lion's-paw and mitchella with which to decorate the old farmhouse at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it was one of their girl friends, named Lucia Scribner, or rather Lucia's mother, at Portland, who invented mitchella jars, and started a new industry in our neighborhood.
Lucia, who was attending the village Academy, often came up to the old farm on a Friday night to visit our girls over Saturday and Sunday. On one visit they gathered a basketful of mitchella, and when Lucia went home to Portland for Thanksgiving, she carried a small boxful of the vines and berries to her mother. Mrs. Scribner was an artist of some ability, and she made several little sketches of the vine on whitewood paper cutters as gifts to her friends. In order to keep the vine moist and fresh while she was making the sketches, she put it in a little glass jar with a piece of glass over the top.
The vine was so pretty in the jar that Mrs. Scribner was loath to throw it away; and after a while she saw that the berries were increasing in size. She had put nothing except a few spoonfuls of water into the jar with the vine; but the berries grew slowly all winter, until they were twice as big as in the fall.
Mrs. Scribner was delighted with the success of her chance experiment. The jar with the vine in it made a very pretty ornament for her work table. Moreover, the plant needed little care. To keep it fresh she had only to moisten it with a spoonful of water every two or three weeks. And cold weather—even zero weather—did not injure it at all. Friends who called on Mrs. Scribner admired her jar, and said that they should like to get some of them. Mrs. Scribner wrote to Theodora and suggested that she and her girl friends make up some mitchella jars, and sell them in the city.
That was the way the little industry began. The girls, however, did not really go into the business until the next fall. Then Theodora, Ellen, and Catherine prepared over a hundred jarfuls of the green vine and berries. Those they sent to Portland and Boston during Christmas week under the name of Mitchella Jars, and Christmas Bouquets. The jars, which were globular in shape and which ranged from a quart in capacity up to three and four quarts, cost from fifteen to thirty-five cents apiece. When filled with mitchella vines, they brought from a dollar and a quarter to two dollars.
On the day above referred to they set out to gather more vines, and they told the people at home that they were going to "Dunham's open"—an old clearing beyond our farther pasture, where once a settler named Dunham had begun to clear a farm. The place was nearly two miles from the old Squire's, and as the girls did not expect to get home until four o'clock, they took their luncheon with them.