96 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 



factory as any I know. One is conscious of 

 being useful for what more useful than the 

 accumulating of berries for pies? One has 

 suitable ideals the ideal of a happy home, 

 since in attaining a happy home berry pies are 

 demonstrably helpful. And one is also having 

 a beautiful time. On my way I turned down 

 the side lane to see how the blackberries were 

 coming on. There lay my blackberry canes 

 lay, not stood their long stems thick-set 

 with fruit just turning from light red to dark. 

 I do not love blackberries as I do birches; it 

 was rather the practical than the contempla 

 tive part of me that protested that time, but it 

 was with a lagging step that I went on, over 

 the hill, to the berry patches. There another 

 shock awaited me. Where I expected to see 

 green clumps of low huckleberries there were 

 great blotches of black earth and gray ashy 

 stems, and in the midst a heap of brush still 

 sending up idle streamers and puffs of blue 

 smoke. Desolation of desolations ! That they 

 should do this thing to a harmless berry 

 patch ! 



They were not all burned. Only the heart 

 of the patch had been taken, and after the 



