. MAPLE SUGAR MAKING. 167 



There are few scenes more impressively picturesque 

 than the sugar camp-fire at night. The dancing blaze 

 lights up the woods, and the objects stand out clear and 

 distinct, or are thrown into deeper shadow by the flick- 

 ering flame ; they move about as the tire changes, and 

 are both real and unreal. Some of the trees look like 

 monster giants reaching their long and naked arms into 

 the light, grasping for other arms — and the imagina- 

 tion can make of them, trees or elves or hobgoblins. 

 There is a weird look about the pale, dry leaves that 

 still hang to the low limbs of some of the beeches, and 

 one instinctively starts, if they rustle, as though it were 

 the rustling of the garments of a ghost. The ancient 

 Greeks believed that when they heard the rustling of 

 dry beech leaves, a wood nymph was being born. Dur- 

 ing these silent watches of the night, a pleasanter sound 

 is the soft and gentle dripping of the sap as it falls into 

 the buckets from the neighboring trees. Its drop, drop, 

 is very musical, and lulls one like the regular ticking of 

 the old clock at home. This even dropping of water is 

 the true liquid melody, and falls upon the ear even 

 more soothingly than the rippling gurgle of the rill. 

 The charmed hour is just as the day begins to dawn. 

 It is like enchantment to lie on the rude couch in the 

 cabin and see the stars fade out in the far away 

 heavens, or to watch the slowly shifting clouds above 

 the net-work of tree-tops, until the trees themselves 

 appear to be moving like masts and spars of many 

 ships. Then the drumming of the partridge will 

 awaken the echoes of the woods, and the robin will 



