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Honey evolved from maple sugar by the mystic bee
agency! What estheticism, what refinement, what
luxury! And do not the bees and other insects
sip at the sap bucket? The average boy does;
and the old inhabitants make “sap coffee” and
“sap beer.” You have noticed’ how the shade
trees all along a village street will suddenly, on a
bright March morning, appear decorated with tin
kettles at the end of pine spouts; and the tinkle,
tinkle of little rivulets is heard as the generous
. trees yield their stored-up sweetness. It was not

complimentary to the children of a certain place
that last year all the trees had the spouts inserted
and the pails and kettles hanging at a height which
could only be reached by a ladder, and the ladder
was not there. 3
Maple sugar time has no definite limits. Some-
times it begins in February, sometimes in March,
_or not till April when the “run” is a very short
one. There is amystery about the agencies which
make the sap start. The wood-pecker who probes
the bark may listen at the hole he has made and
hear something about it; the woodchuck burrowed
at the roots may be conscious when there is a stir

 

A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP. |

within there; if there are dryads living in the trees
and gnomes under them, they are sure to know.
But the wisest woodsman cannot answer some of
your questions. .He will tell you that sap is

- sweeter from a tree which stands by itself; that it is

thinner near surface water, and darker as you bore
farther in; but why it is more abundant some years
than others, and just how climatic changes affect
the flow, or the time, or flavor, he cannot say.

The genuine sugar camp of old, without a roof
over your head, the fire fed by sticks gathered up,

Be;

a piece of fat pork hung above the kettle to keep
it from boiling over, and all the gypsyish sort of
life, has quite gone by, or pretty nearly.

You will find many a sugar place such as we
did on that misty twilight of last April, when the
travelling was neither wheeling nor sleighing; and
the horses worrying through drifts that came to the
wheel-hubs and then plunging into soft mud —that
is the kind in sugar-time— took us in safety at
last to the door of a rambling farmhouse. The
sugar orchard covered the side hill away beyond.
To reach it we floundered and slipped and slumped
along the winding country road till we came where