cal mind.

Jonathan was from the first infected with the desire of making the farm
more productive--in the ordinary sense; and one day, when I wandered up
to a distant corner, oh, dismay! There was a slope of twinkling
birches--no longer twinkling--prone! Cut, dragged, and piled up in
masses of white stems and limp green leafage and tangled red-brown
twigs! It was a sorry sight. I walked about it much, perhaps, as my
white hens had walked about the barnyard, and to as little purpose. For
the contemplative mind is no match for the practical. I knew this, yet I
could not forbear saying, later:--

"Jonathan, I was up near the long meadow to-day."

"Were you?"

"O Jonathan! Those birches!"

"What about them?"

"All cut!"

"Oh, yes. We need that piece for pasturage."

"Oh, dear! We might as well not have a farm if we cut down all the
birches."

"We might as well not have a farm if we don't cut them down. They'll run
us out in no time."

"They don't look as if they would run anybody out--the dears!"

"Why, I didn't know you felt that way about them. We'll let that other
patch stand, if you like."

"_If_ I like!"

I saved the birches, but other things kept happening. I went out one day
and found one of our prettiest fence lines reduced to bare bones, all
its bushes and vines--clematis, elderberry, wild cherry, sweet-fern,
bitter-sweet--all cut, hacked, torn away. It looked like a collie dog in
the summer when his long yellow fur has been sheared off. And, another
day, it was a company of red lilies escaped along a bank above the
roadside. There were weeds mixed in, to be sure, and some bushes, a
delightful tangle--and all snipped, shaved to the skin!

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