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 contemplative 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 first shock I explored the edges to see what was left,
but with no courage for picking. I came home with an empty pail and a
mind severe.

"Jonathan," I said that night, "I thought you liked pies?"

"I do," he said expectantly.

"Well, what do you like in them?"

"Berries, preferably."

"Oh, I thought perhaps you preferred cinders or dried briers."

Jonathan looked up inquiringly, then a light broke. "Oh, you mean those
blackberry bushes. Didn't I tell you about that? That was a mistake."

"So I thought," I said, unappeased.

"I mean, I didn't mean them to be cut. It was that fool hobo I gave work
to last week. I told him to cut the brush in the lane. Idiot! I thought
he knew a blackberry bush!"

"With the fruit on it, too," I added, relenting toward Jonathan a
little. Then I stiffened again. "How about the huckleberry patch? Was
that a mistake, too?"

Jonathan looked guilty, but held himself as a man should.

"Why, no," he said; "that is, Hiram thought we needed more ground to
plough up next year, and that's as good a piece as there is--no big
rocks or trees, you know. And we must have crops, you know."

"Bless the rocks!" I burst out. "I wish there were more of them! If it
weren't for the rocks the farm would be _all_ crops!"

Jonathan laughed, then we both laughed.

"You talk as though that would be a misfortune," he said.

"It would be simply unendurable," I replied.

"Jonathan," I added, "I am afraid you have not a proper subo