the buckets or the pans, and reclaiming those that have blown away, and
the delightful work is resumed. But the first run, like first love, is
always the best, always the fullest, always the sweetest; while there
is a purity and delicacy of flavor about the sugar that far surpasses
any subsequent yield.

Trees differ much in the quantity as well as in the quality of sap
produced in a given season. Indeed, in a bush or orchard of fifty or
one hundred trees, as wide a difference may be observed in this respect
as among that number of cows in regard to the milk they yield. I have
in my mind now a "sugar-bush" nestled in the lap of a spur of the
Catskills, every tree of which is known to me, and assumes a distinct
individuality in my thought. I know the look and quality of the whole
two hundred; and when on my annual visit to the old homestead I find
one has perished, or fallen before the axe, I feel a personal loss.
They are all veterans, and have yielded up their life's blood for the
profit of two or three generations. They stand in little groups for
couples. One stands at the head of a spring-run, and lifts a large dry
branch high above the woods, where hawks and crows love to alight. Half
a dozen are climbing a little hill; while others stand far out in the
field, as if they had come out to get the sun. A file of five or six
worthies sentry the woods on the northwest, and confront a steep
side-hill where sheep and cattle graze. An equal number crowd up to the
line on the east; and their gray, stately trunks are seen across
meadows or fields of grain. Then there is a pair of Siamese twins, with
heavy, bushy tops; while in the forks of a wood-road stand the two
brothers, with their arms around each other's neck, and their bodies in
gentle contact for a distance of thirty feet.

One immense maple, known as the "old-creampan-tree," stands, or did