instead of the auger and the manner of tapping was crude and wasteful. A
slanting gash three or four inches long and a half inch or more deep was
cut, and an inch below the lower end of this the gouge was driven in to
make the place for the spile, a piece of wood two inches wide, shaped to
the gouge, and a foot or more in length. It gave the tree a double and
unnecessary wound. The bigger the gash the more the sap, seemed to be
the theory, as if the tree was a barrel filled with liquid, whereas a
small wound made by a half-inch bit does the work just as well and is
far less injurious to the tree.

When there came a bright morning, wind northwest and warm enough to
begin to thaw by eight o'clock, the sugar-making utensils--pans,
kettles, spiles, hogsheads--were loaded upon the sled and taken to the
woods, and by ten o'clock the trees began to feel the cruel ax and gouge
once more. It usually fell to my part to carry the pans and spiles for
one of the tappers, Hiram or Father, and to arrange the pans on a level
foundation of sticks or stones, in position. Father often used to haggle
the tree a good deal in tapping. "By Fagus," he would say, "how awkward
I am!" The rapid tinkle of those first drops of sap in the tin pan, how
well I remember it! Probably the note of the first song sparrow or first
bluebird, or the spring call of the nuthatch, sounded in unison. Usually
only patches of snow lingered here and there in the woods and the earth-
stained remnants of old drifts on the sides of the hills and along the
stone walls. Those lucid warm March days in the naked maple woods under
the blue sky, with the first drops of sap ringing in the pans, had a
charm that does not fade from my mind. After the trees were all tapped,
two hundred and fifty of them, the big kettles were again set up in the
old stone-arch, and the hogsheads in which to store the sap placed in
position. By four o'clock many of the pans--milk pans from the dairy--
would be full, and the gathering with neck yoke and pails began. When I