The lean and hungry pastures of Bellingham were prolific in inexhaustible harvests; what they bore on their surface may hint of something deeper and more perennial. The pastures and borders of the woods were covered with patches of huckleberry and blue-berry bushes, and over every stone heap clambered the low blackberry vines with racemes of luscious fruit. The pastures were named from one or the other of these berries, and their owners never claimed private right to them. To put up the bars as we entered and left the field, was the only obligation expected of us. Seldom were they taken down; the women crawled through, the boys leaped over, the small girls squeezed in between the posts and the wall. Our forefathers left the turnstile behind them in their English meadows, but not the short-cut from house to house, from field to field or from village to village. There is always a shorter way than the crowd travels. Boys and animals, those untaught explorers and surveyors, are the first to find it. Once within the pasture, a hundred short paths led hither and thither wherein grew a little low, sweet grass which the red cows grazed and sheep nibbled; and as they sauntered along they paid behind for their food in front. Then a warning voice would be raised telling us to be careful where we stepped. In these mazy pathways we were always returning upon our tracks and finding the bushes we had already stripped. Children were crying out to each other that the bottom of their pails was covered, or that they had a pint or quart, and generally as many went into the mouth as into the pail. The days when we went berrying were holidays, although the berries were picked for market and added a mite to the year's supply of silver money. Bank bills and gold we never saw, only silver and copper, and of these, silver was the money of men and women and huge copper cents and half cents of boys. I can remember a time when one cent was riches unspeakable, treasured for months and often displayed in triumph to penniless companions. Poor indeed are they who have never known the day of small things and the size of a cent. It is said money is only good for what it will buy, and the miser who hoards is the scoff of mankind. I must have been a descendant of Shylock for I loved cents for themselves and the feeling of importance they gave me. I polished them until they shone like gold and the face of the Father of his Country gleamed with irridescent benignity. Some were hopelessly worn and battered; some had a hole in them or a piece nicked out of the rim. These I exchanged with my mother for more perfect ones which I could burnish.