172 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



ing out on the sliady side of the trees. Occasionally 

 you find a beautiful white-bellied deer mouse drowned 

 in the half-filled buckets. 



The housekeepers of the woods have everywhere put 

 down carpets, whose warp of green is filled in with the 

 woof of bright blossoms. 



The ferns have unwound their downy coils, and their 

 spreading fronds fill the air with an herby perfume. 

 The thrifty green leeks look better than they taste, and 

 taste better than they smell. Everywhere the ground 

 is decorated with erythroniums, trilliums, dicentras, 

 spring beauties and cardamines. But these esthetic 

 attractions are not the only objects of interest to at 

 least the younger members of the sugar makers. 

 "Where is the country boy that does not know, as well 

 as the squirrel does, where everything grows that is 

 good to eat or to gnaw upon ? The aromatic black birch, 

 the young wintergreen, the fragrant spice bush and 

 slippery elm all belong to his out-door larder. 



The chief profit of these few days of pleasant labor 

 in the woods does not lie in the amount of sugar made, 

 although the yield may be abundant, and it is the most 

 healthful and toothsome of sweets — the mone}^ value of 

 the product is the least part ; but it consists in what 

 the mind has absorbed of the spirit of nature by this 

 closer contact with her; the imagination has been fed 

 on wholesome food ; the love of the country has been 

 nourished, every physical sense has been quickened and 

 strengthened, and the mind has been made richer by 

 a better knowledge of the real living things of earth. 



