ground, or on it in the shape of snow and the air full of sunshine are
the most favourable conditions. A certain chill and crispness, something
crystalline, in the air are necessary. A touch of enervating warmth from
the south or a frigidity from the north and the trees feel it through
their thick bark coats very quickly. Between the temperatures of thirty-
five to fifty degrees they get in their best work. After we have had one
run ending in rain and warmth, a fresh fall of snow--"sap snow", the
farmers call such--will give us another run. Three or four good runs
make a long and successful season. My boyhood days in the spring sugar
bush were my most enjoyable on the farm. How I came to know each one of
those two hundred and fifty trees--what a distinct sense of
individuality seemed to adhere to most of them, as much so as to each
cow in a dairy! I knew at which trees I would be pretty sure to find a
full pan and at which ones a less amount. One huge tree always gave a
cream-pan full--a double measure--while the others were filling an
ordinary pan. This was known as "the old cream-pan tree." Its place has
long been vacant; about half the others are still standing, but with the
decrepitude of age appearing in their tops, a new generation of maples
has taken the place of the vanished veterans.

While tending the kettles there beside the old arch in the bright, warm
March or April days, with my brother, or while he had gone to dinner,
looking down the long valley and off over the curving backs of the
distant mountain ranges, what dreams I used to have, what vague
longings, and, I may say, what happy anticipations! I am sure I gathered
more than sap and sugar in those youthful days amid the maples. When I
visit the old home now I have to walk up to the sugar bush and stand
around the old "boiling place," trying to transport myself back into the
magic atmosphere of that boyhood time. The man has his dreams, too, but
to his eyes the world is not steeped in romance as it is to the eyes of