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.
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