HELLA JARS

Cold weather was again approaching. October had been very wet; but
bright, calm days of Indian summer followed in November. And about that
time Catherine, Theodora and Ellen had an odd adventure while out in the
woods gathering partridge berries.

At the old farm we called the vivid green creeping vine that bears those
coral-red berries in November, "partridge berry," because partridge feed
on the berries and dig them from under the snow. Botanists, however,
call the vine _Mitchella repens_. In our tramps through the woods we
boys never gave it more than a passing glance, for the berries are not
good to eat. The girls, however, thought that the vine was very pretty.
Every fall Theodora and Ellen, with Kate Edwards, and sometimes the
Wilbur girls, went into the woods to gather lion's-paw and mitchella
with which to decorate the old farmhouse at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But it was one of their girl friends, named Lucia Scribner, or rather
Lucia's mother, at Portland, who invented mitchella jars, and started a
new industry in our neighborhood.

Lucia, who was attending the village Academy, often came up to the old
farm on a Friday night to visit our girls over Saturday and Sunday. On
one visit they gathered a basketful of mitchella, and when Lucia went
home to Portland for Thanksgiving, she carried a small boxful of the
vines and berries to her mother. Mrs. Scribner was an artist of some
ability, and she made several little sketches of the vine on whitewood
paper cutters as gifts to her friends. In order to keep the vine moist
and fresh while she was making the sketches, she put it in a little
glass jar with a piece of glass over the top.

The vine was so pretty in the jar that Mrs. Scribner was loath to throw
it away; and after a while she saw that the berries were increasing in
size. She had put nothing except a few spoonfuls of water into the jar
with the vine; but the berries grew slowly all winter, until they were
twice as big as in the fall.

Mrs. Scribner was delighted with the success of her chance experiment.
The jar with the vine in it made a very pretty ornament for her work
table. Moreover, the plant needed little care. To keep it fresh she had
only to moisten it with a spoonful of water every two or three weeks.
And cold weather--even zero weather--did not injure it at all. Friends
who called on Mrs. Scribner admired her jar, and said that they should
like to get some of them. Mrs. Scribn