CHAPTER XXI. EDUCATED 

 STRAWBERRIES AND 

 BURBANK PLUMS 



HOW much will strawberries cost in 

 1940? About eight dollars a quart! 

 How do I know? Well, I got a 

 "condition" in arithmetic (as well 

 as in algebra and geometry) when 

 I entered Harvard, but I can do 

 some figuring, nevertheless. Twenty summers 

 ago I spent a month with one of my sisters, who 

 lived near East Portland, Oregon. Her home 

 had three great assets — a glorious view of 

 Mount Hood, snowclad all summer; some re- 

 markable cherry trees, of which more anon; 

 and a large strawberry bed. Oregon is as famous 

 for its fragrant wild strawberries as France is 

 for its f raises des bois; give these luscious 

 berries the advantages of a "college education" 

 in a garden, as Mark Twain would say, and — 

 well, if Webster could have tasted them he 

 would have defined ambrosia in his dictionary 

 not as food of the gods, but simply as Oregon 

 strawberries. 



Ambrosia was so easy to raise in that state 

 that the market was glutted. It cost one cent 

 for a basket, and another cent for a Chinaman 

 to fill it with berries. And the Portland grocers 

 refused to pay more than two cents a quart! 

 Consequently these incomparable berries were 



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