NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXI.-APRIL, 1881.-VOL. LXII.

THE GREEN MOUNTAINS IN SUGAR-TIME.

TAPPING.

WHEN We think of Labrador of

is as we think of Labrador or Alaska-as something within the boundaries of the continent, but aloof from the attributes and intimacy of the commonwealth; and it is only by poring over a map and a guide that we are made to understand how near it is to the city, and that its population is not isolated from us by an arctic environment. Every reputable person with a proper respect for himself knows that the State has the same characteristics, the same homely virtues, and the same pervasive common-school intelligence as the rest of New England; but the unrevised, intuitive idea of it is that it is bleak and distant, that its surface is broken by many mountain ranges, and that maple sugar is an ameliorating staple.

A proposition to investigate it in March elicits some domestic opposition; but March is the time for the maples, and acquiescing in preparations which suggest a polar expedition, we leave the city in the

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

VOL. LXII.-No. 371.-41

warm and idealizing haze of a premature as it is to study the maples that we have spring.

All the forenoon we reach northward by the banks of the Hudson, which are clear of snow even up to the heights of Cro'nest and the Storm King; the slopes are brown with the budding foliage, and the water traffic shows that the river men have finally dismissed the winter. But in the afternoon the scene changes; we have passed Troy, and still bearing northward, we look out of the car windows on a landscape with a communicative chilliness of color and feeling. The skies are overcast by heavy clouds, and the air has a moist penetrativeness; the dépôts are small and uncomfortable; the soil is scrubby and fallow; the homesteads are seriously unbeautiful; and we detect a dialect in the murmured conversation of the car which convinces us that we are in Vermont.

ventured into this northern latitude, we take courage with the afternoon train for Shrewsbury, where the maple orchards are famous.

There are many groves on the way, bordered by sentinel evergreens, whose branches are overlaid by snow, and have the crisp whiteness of ostrich feathers. All down the slopes the maples have preponderance, and, like those we have already seen, are tapped, though beads of ice seal the incisions. In half an hour the train leaves us at one of the villages which Shrewsbury embraces, and we watch it disappear up the heavy grade in the confusion of the storm before we comprehend that we are standing alone on the platform of the dépôt, which is terraced in one mountain and confronted by another, with little more than a gully between. The snow is mystifying, and no tavern is visible among the cluster of houses in the hollow; but while we are debating as to our proper course, a young man opens the door of the station and invites us to come in. He is a small, wiry fellow, with sharp features; and over the Morse instrument, through which he has been exchanging civilities with the operator at Rutland, is a silver cornet.

"Do you play?" we inquire, as we linger before the stove, which is snapping with heat.

"Occasionally, at dances," he answers; and as he closes the door of the ticket office we notice that it is secured by a peculiar lock, which excites our interest.

We come nearer to the hills that at first are distant, and wind through narrow valleys, where there are clumps of silvery birches, elders, and maples. We sometimes discover a rugged hut, from which a column of smoke is ascending amidst the maples, from each of which a pail is suspended. The hours are long, the frostless cold increases, and the dullness of the day ends in rain. We alight in a precise and well-conditioned town among the hills, where marble is so common that it is used for fences and for the door-steps of frame houses. The life is placid, and the business is invisible, though the blocks of stores indicate no small measure of prosperity and ambition. But the littleness of purpose and achievement, in contrast with the vigorous metropolis that we left in the morning, is soon dismissed in the glow and crackle of a birch-wood fire, which seems to lubricate the whole being. The outer weather is nothing to us until morning, and in the morning our discontent is revived in finding that all the hills have disappeared in what Emerson graphically describes as "the tumultuous privacy of the storm." The fast-flying flakes, whirled by a biting wind, muffle the distance, and when in moments of respite the nearer hills shape themselves again, it is as in a mirage- We do not wait to hear of his other ocdubious and vanishing. What consola-cupations, as his versatility seems limittion there is comes to us in the intimation that it is a sugar snow, which with the relaxation of a thaw will leave the maples in a soft, yielding condition; and

"It's an invention of mine; I have a patent issued on it," he explains; and he then unfastens another door opening into a smaller apartment, strung before the window of which is a lot of watches, with various tools spread on the bench below for adjusting and repairing them. He applies himself to these with easy familiarity, and speaks of a fertilizer and Bible dictionary for which he is agent. At least six violins are hung against the wall; and as we pick at the strings of one of them he tells us, without any boastfulness, that this instrument also was made by him.

less, and we once more face the storm, following his directions down the hill to a little tavern in a street of less than a dozen houses, which, for all the life that can

be seen, might be tenantless. Not a soul and they charged us two dollars for one is afoot or discoverable through the win-room, and two fifty for the other!" He dows, and our only greeting is from a half-bred bull-dog, whose growls give urgency to our raps at the tavern door, which, with some delay, is opened for us by a man who has been asleep, and is noted, "that's all confounded nonsense!" yet fully awake.

of soap for sale, which was guaranteed to remove all blemishes from the skin and moral character of the person using it; it would curl the hair, and a poodle-dog's tail to which it was applied had become as curvilinear as a watch spring, and could not be unwound for several years. The demand for it was so great at Whitehall one day that an assistant salesman became necessary, and the peddler engaged a young man who had just graduated from some country college. "A ne plus ultra critter, who couldn't add up an account without 'plussing' this and 'plussing' thata fellow with a good deal of Latin in him, and not a bit of sense. At the end of the day it was found that he had taken in a large amount of counterfeit coin and a spurious ten-dollar note. "Look here, you should be careful; that's bad," said the disgusted peddler, showing him the note, which was a common woodengraving. 'Bad? why, bless me," responded the innocent, in amazement, "I didn't know that a bank would issue counterfeit money!"

Not all of his anecdotes are repeatable; but one more is worth telling for the light it throws upon his versatility. He wished to purchase a team of horses from one Deacon Woodbury at S, and a friend who was with him introduced him as Elder Dawley, to which he was about to object, when his companion whispered to him, "Be quiet, you'll get the team for twenty dollars less as a parson than as a layman"; and, indeed, the deacon was so devoutly considerate of the church that the purchase was effected on very easy terms. At dinner, however, the elder was called upon for grace before meat, and though unfamiliar with devotions of any kind, he was unwilling to expose the fraud to which he had lent himself, and he returned thanks with an unction that put him high in the deacon's esteem. It became known that a minister was in the village, and he was invited to console a sick old man, which he did, as he says, to the entire satisfaction of all the relatives. On the following day, a lawyer having failed to appear for him, he conducted a case of his own in court, and in the afternoon wielded the hammer at an auction. Later in the evening the fiddler was missing from a dance, and he offered himself as a substitute. While he was poring over the music with great attentiveness, though he could not read a note, a child of yesterday's invalid happened to look in, and was struck aghast by the sight she saw. "Why, ma," she cried, as soon as she reached home, "would you believe it?-that old minister who was here yesterday is a-fiddling away like all possessed at the dance!"

If Mr. Dawley was unscrupulous, it is to be said in his favor that he was obliging, and that he possessed plenty of that Yankee adaptativeness which we had already observed in the station-master, who, as we found out while our host was un

on the porch had shrunk to zero. All yesterday's snow was crisp and glazed, and creaked beneath the feet, and the wind was full of stings. The sugar-makers reflected the hue of the sky. But we were not to be confined, and set out up the whited mountains along a zigzag path and between the straight-laced pines, which, next to the maples, were the most abundant. The way followed the curvatures and undulations of the mountain, and every moment more and more of the vast forms were unfolded to us, with every notch defined as by a black edge against that intensely blue vault, which was unfeathered by a single

burdening himself of his experiences with garrulous suavity, had made the chairs in which we were sitting. All the afternoon the snow continued to fall, and no one ventured out of the houses; but in the evening a few who could not content themselves at home came into the tavern, and deposited themselves around the stove with the apparent object of cooling it by a phenomenal | cloud. In contrast with its surroundings, frequency of expectoration. The village the noisy brook that held to the road like store over the way had a similar circle, and the silence and vacuity sent us early to bed.

a dear companion was utterly black as it broke through the clotted snow and ice, which imprisoned it for a reach, and then The brilliant light that forced itself let it burst forth with a contentious and through our shutters next morning told vehement murmur. A chickadee that us that the skies were clear. They were made a poor breast against the wind was such a blue as we had never seen before the only visitant of the bird world that in sunlight: a deep, luminous, midnight had come out on this piercing morning; blue, and the mercury in the thermometer and every branch snapped against the