214 



A WHITE TABLE IN THE WOODS. 



This is not a tale of far away and long 

 ago — in the Black Forest, for instance — 

 but a true story of the summer just past, 

 and it comes from under the shadow of 

 our own Whi^e Mountains, where two 

 boys made discoveries in the great out of 

 doors. The boys let me into many of 

 their secrets, and now the summer is 

 gone I am allowed to tell this one, be- 

 cause, if you have never happened to find 

 a big table spread not under the trees for 

 picnic people, but high up in a tree for 

 woods people, you will want to look for 

 one next summer. 



This was, of course, a wooden table, its 

 cover both snowy and glossy; the plates, 

 which were round, and all the same size, 

 were of wood and placed in straight, reg- 

 ular rows, six hundred and fifty of them 

 — that is true, for the boys counted and 

 computed — a hospitable board, you 

 think, and you will be sure of it when you 

 know the whole story ! The butler — who 

 was also host — not only arranged but 

 carved the plates, and wore a business 

 suit of black and white, with a bright red 

 cap and necktie of the same cheerful hue 

 over a buff shirt. 



The feast at this table was continuous, 

 consisting of choice game, and the sweet- 

 est of sweets. The guests, who came and 

 went during all the sunshine hours, were 

 so various in dress and manners that they 

 could not be compared with those at any 

 public or private banquet ever known, so 

 the puzzle must stop here and the plain 

 facts be told. 



The table was twenty feet from the 

 ground, and set on one side of a tree, so, 

 though of wood, and as round as the tree, 

 you see it differed from your dining-table 

 — and King Arthur's — in being tipped 

 perpendicularly so as to arrange the 

 plates in straight rows, close together, 

 thus accommodating more guests. The 



table cover was of the best quality of 

 birch bark. The butler host — or per- 

 haps we might call him the architect of 

 the feast — was the Yellow-breasted Sap- 

 sucker ; if you didn't know him well you 

 would call him just one of the woodpeck- 

 ers ; he had all their peculiarities, crawled 

 around up and down the tree trunk, brac- 

 ing himself with his tail, pecking, pound- 

 ing and boring, he excavated the hun- 

 dreds of round holes, each one a soup 

 plate to catch and hold the ascending sap. 

 This is what the Sapsucker seeks, and up- 

 on this alone he can live all summer, as 

 proved by Mr. Frank Bolles, who tells us 

 how he caught and kept young Sapsuck- 

 ers alive till October, feeding them only 

 on diluted maple syrup. But tiny insects 

 are fond of sweets, too; they swarmed 

 around and lost themselves in our wood- 

 pecker's full soup plates, thus furnishing 

 him with the animal food needed by such 

 a worker. 



There was always a buzz of bees and 

 big flies about the tree table, who seemed 

 to feast and get away safely. These first 

 attracted our attention, but if we stayed 

 five minutes we were sure to hear the 

 dear, familiar sound announcing the most 

 charming of all guests — humming birds 

 — you know they are brave, brave as they 

 are beautiful, but we found them shy 

 about coming too near a Sapsucker ; they 

 hovered over his table as over a flower 

 bed, often lighting on twigs to watch their 

 chance at the freshest and fullest dishes. 



With the ruby throats, and on the best 

 of terms with them, came gorgeous but- 

 terflies; the red admiral, the tiger swallow 

 tail, and the antiopa were always there, 

 and how bright they were seen against 

 the snowy birch tree, in dazzling morn- 

 ing sunshine ! 



The biggest and boldest of all the free 

 feeders is on record as having come and 



