frosty seizure, while the loose dry leaves of the past autumn were borne shrieking along the compact and crusted snow. There were ghostly birches with dark scars on their bark, and heavily branched beeches; the austere firs were crested with downy white, and fringed, where the sun had struck them, with pendent icicles; and here was a wild cherry on a little knoll, with a bark of so rich and glistening a copper bronze that it looked like some warm artery veined against the sky. But outnumbering all the others were the maples, that stood inside the fences and out along the roadway, in scattered groups and single file, and in swarms on the slopes, where the distance between each was so narrow that the lower growths of the branches had been prevented, and it was only high above the ground that they could spread themselves. Hanging from each-scarcely one had not been tapped-was a red bucket or a tin pail; and the tin pails in the distance caught the sunshine, and were so emblazoned by it that they seemed like the shields of some advancing army. But not a drop of say was flowing, and when the buckets contained any it was concealed under ice and frozen snow, which also formed a solid bow from the mouth of the spout. There is a human and poetic quality in maples, which is easily felt, and though the land would be worth more for its lumber than for its sugar, many farmers would no more part with their maple bush or orchard than with any precious heirloom. There are careless and avaricious growers who bore their trees in several places at once, or before the proper season, and then the trees, like overdriven creatures, fail and die of exhaustion. The gentle method succeeds best, by prolonging the life, and to this end those whom we first mentioned devote something like affectionate care. At the top of the mountain we met one of the largest sugar producers of the neighborhood, a gentleman who has an orchard of two thousand trees, and who lives in a long, low, old-fashioned house, out of every window of which the beautiful hills are seen undulating in such close lines that there seems to be little or no space between them--hills so profusely wooded that we could understand how applicable their name might be in summer, though they were now white and leafless in the wintry inthrall ment. The glowing stove was an unspeakable blessing, for the wind had not abated nor lost its penetrativeness; and as we thawed ourselves the host placed a dish of apples before us, with an invitation to eat, which is an almost invariable part of an introduction in Vermont. "Two days ago," he said, "I went to Rutland, and before leaving told the boys to tap as many trees as they could; but though the morning was soft and clear, I felt the approach of a storm in the afternoon, and as soon as I got home again I stopped the work-none too soon, either." A centre table was strewn with books, magazines, and newspapers, agricultural, religious, and secular. There were more books in the capacious window-seats, and though it seemed as far from the top of this hill to the city as from the top of a Sierra Nevada, the world and its immediate doings were scarcely less familiar up here than in Roxbury or Harlem. One can venture among these mountains into spots which the whistle of the locomotive has never pierced, and where the mail is left in very small quantities by a dilapidated coach, without finding much that is genuinely primitive. The unenlightened but shrewd settlers of earlier days, who knew more of nature than of cities, are in their last generation, and the children have lost the simplicity and individuality of their progenitors. It is said that elementary education is more general in Vermont than in any other State, and with the little learning the irreverent spirit of the age has crept in. Those whose fathers wore homespun and were vigorously distinct in character, ape the ways of town, and are drifting into vulgar and uninteresting "cockneyism." be wild, but that there was as much intelligence and culture among them as among others. She uttered "culture" with the sibillant Bostonian twang, and that she possessed some of it herself was more than a matter of surmise, from the well-worn copies of Tennyson, Pope, and other poets on a side table. The exterior dilapidation was accounted for by their intention to build a new house in the spring, and the greater warmth. As there was no place of public entertainment within six or seven miles, and as the first train was not due until late at night, we were glad of the tea she prepared for us--served in a brilliant silver urn of recent design, with sugar bowl and milk jug to match-and we spent a very pleasant evening before a crackling fire of birch. we approached a queer old house, which had been a tavern in coaching days, and which now stood back from the highway, in great need of a coat of paint. The earth was piled around its tottering frame to a height of three or four feet, and the refuse of the barn-yard was scattered before it with unpromising thriftlessness. There flashed upon us a picture of what we should find within-a slovenly woman and children, the children dirty and cry-earth was piled up around the old one for ing, and the woman scolding. We tapped at the door-perhaps we might find a bit of old furniture, or a "character," something picturesque, though neither clean nor comfortable. What we saw took our breath away. A young and pretty girl opened the door-a girl with all the unblemished purity and sweetness of maidenhood shining in her face; dressed neatly and in excellent taste, and wearing her hair plaited into a braid, from which not one vagrant hair escaped. Her father was away, but she ushered us into a small parlor, with a piano among its other furni ture, wherein sat a smooth and dignified woman, her mother, who, when we blundered out some remark indicating our surprise at the comfort of the interior, said with some severity that city folks supposed the people living in the mountains to While waiting for the weather to moderate, we were not without diversions. One day we listened to the florid eloquence of Mr. Dawley at an auction in 66 'the flats," where many curious characters were gathered; and another day was relieved by a country dance, which was attended by the young men and women from neighboring farms. The dance and the auction are almost the only dissipations the people know, and one yields the ice, and hurried it away to dissolution, | and the woods were full of a moisture which softened every sound. Quick to feel the genial change, the maples relaxed, and in all the groves sleds were moving and smoke was rising from the sugarhouses, while the sap dripped abundantly into the buckets, and the sound of its fall mingled with the patter of the snow melting on the feathered evergreens. Sugar-making now and sugar-making as it was are very different things, and what it has gained in facility it has lost in picturesqueness. The old camp with its primitive appliances is no more; the "kettle" has been superseded by the "pan," and the trough is become a mass of crumbling decay. The women and children are kept at home, and no longer know the old-time delights of "sugaring off," though in the Arcadia of the past their services were not despised, and the whole household set up its abode in the woods. gallons in capacity, and each was filled with sap, which was kept boiling, the larger kettles being refilled from the smaller ones as evaporation reduced the quantity. When the contents were reduced to a desired consistency, the hot syrup was dipped out and passed through a flannel strainer into covered tubs, from which again it was poured into a large, thick-bottomed kettle for the process of "stirring off," some milk and the whites of several eggs being added to it. Thus prepared, it was placed over a slow fire, and kept just below boiling-point until the sediment and all foreign matters in it floated to the top and were removed, when it became deliciously translucent. It was now exposed to a greater heat and gently boiled, the evaporation continuing, and bringing it nearer to the point of granulation. Now the sugar-maker was all watchfulness, and it fared ill with those who distracted him, for if the golden liquid seething in chards to-day a galvanized iron spout is used, which has the advantage of not souring the sap nor choking many pores. Everything is "improved.” The collections are made with the unvarying order of collections from letter-boxes, and if the grove is on a hill, and the sugar-house is in a hollow, the sap, as it is gathered, is emptied into a "flume," which quickly conducts it to a large reservoir within the building, wherein it is strained through cloth. A scoop or a ladle is as anachro the kettle boiled the least bit too much, it would become dry in quality, while if it boiled too little, it would become "soggy." He tested it constantly, plucking threads of it from his stirring stick, and trailing them round in cups of cold water. While the threads yielded waxily to the touch, the sugar was not yet done, but as soon as one broke crisp between his fingers, the moment had come to take the kettle off the fire. As the sugar began to cool, it crystallized round the sides, and gradually the whole mass, under a vigorous stir-nistic as a javelin. From the reservoir the ring, became granular. In that way sugar was made years ago, and when the sap flowed profusely the operations were continued through the night, and the fires cast strange shadows in the woods. But instead of a hut of logs a permanent sugar-house is now built, and furnished with many elaborate devices to prevent waste and deterioration. Formerly, when the maples were tapped with an auger, an "elder quill" was inserted in the incision to conduct the sap into the trough below; that is, a small piece of elder wood about three inches long with the pith bored out of it, which formed a tube; but in most or sap is conducted, as required, through tin pipes into a "heater," whence it passes through a series of iron tubes to be delivered, after straining, in a condition for "sugaring off." Maple sugar as it reaches the market is of a clearer color for all these improvements; but there are some who actually say that the flavor has fallen off, and that the new patent evaporators are a snare. One change has certainly not been for the better, and that is the abandonment of the social life of the old camps, which made sugar-time in the Green Mountains enduring memories with those who are now ebbing away. EV AN ENGLISH VERY cultivated mind has doubtless its own classic ground, and its own personal associations of interest, if not of affection. However differing in the origin or the motives of their enthusiasm, assuredly there will never be any lack of pilgrims to their favorite shrines throughout all the world. Yet it has always seemed to me that the soil and the monuments of old England must of necessity be to the American visitor the subjects of a warmer interest and a closer regard than any foreign localities can possibly be to the Englishman. The English traveller in Greece or Italy may, indeed, visit the scenes of noble deeds, and wander among the remains of classic civilization; he may climb the Acropolis to recall the poetry and the arts which gave an undying lustre to the age of Pericles, or linger in the Forum as he wonders at the grandeur of the Cæsars. Yet there must always be something very foreign to him in it all. To the American, on the other hand, almost every step on English soil is full of memories of his own kith and CATHEDRAL. kin and blood, and all the literature and poetry of his life, from the nursery up to adult manhood, is brought vividly before him at almost every turn. He will see on many a time-worn finger-board in Oxfordshire the precise number of miles to Banbury Cross. In Nottinghamshire, on the borders of Lincoln, he may stroll under the noble oaks that still flourish as the remains of Sherwood Forest. He may angle for barbel in the silver Thames from the very banks of the little islet of Runnymede. He will find the golden wheat of Leicestershire waving thick over the slopes of Bosworth Field. He will turn to the spire of Stratford as a beacon among the green lanes of Warwick and Kenilworth. And driving through the shades of Twickenham and Sheen, he may tread the terraces of royal Windsor, and hear the curfew from Stoke Pogis church-yard pealing out over the rich woods that embosom that stately domain. Every look is full of cherished association, and every step seems to fall on hallowed yet familiar ground. |