When I spoke about it, Jonathan said: "I'm sorry. I suppose Hiram was just making the place shipshape." "Shipshape! This farm shipshape! You could no more make this farm shipshape than you could make a woodchuck look as though he had been groomed. The farm isn't a ship." "I hope it isn't a woodchuck, either," said Jonathan. During the haying season there was always a lull. The hand of the destroyer was stayed. Rather, every one was so busy cutting the hay that there was no time to cut anything else. One day in early August I took a pail and sauntered up the lane in the peaceful mood of the berry-picker--a state of mind as satisfactory 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 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."