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. Scribner wrote to Theodora and suggested
that she and her girl friends make up some mitchella jars, and sell them
in the city.
That was the way the little industry began. The girls, however, did not
really go into the business until the next fall. Then Theodora, Ellen,
and Catherine prepared over a hundred jarfuls of the green vine and
berries. Those they sent to Portland and Boston during Christmas week
under the name of Mitchella Jars, and Christmas Bouquets. The jars,
which were globular in shape and which ranged from a quart in capacity
up to three and four quarts, cost from fifteen to thirty-five cents
apiece. When filled with mitchella vines, they brought from a dollar and
a quarter to two dollars.
On the day above referred to they set out to gather more vines, and they
told the people at home that they were going to "Dunham's open"--an old
clearing beyond our farther pasture, where once a settler named Dunham
had begun to clear a farm.
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