VERMONT MAPLE SUGAR 165 



States, and here if anywhere you may see the art 

 practised in its perfection. There may be better 

 sugar makers than C. S. Grimes, who has been at 

 it for sixty years, but if so I do not know them. He 

 began with the old-time black iron kettle, boiled 

 in the open over a green wood fire. He has seen 

 the business grow in the sugar house to the use of 

 scientifically accurate evaporating pans where sap 

 flows in a steady stream into one end and comes 

 out syrup of a law-required density of eleven, 

 pounds to the gallon at the other, the whole work- 

 ing automatically ; and in that time he has learned 

 something of the whims of the maples themselves, 

 though not all of them. 



Much of the lore of the great gray trees he told 

 me as we sat together on the broad doorstone of 

 the little white farmhouse, steeping in the sun and 

 looking down upon the peaceful valley and across 

 to Haystack, hazed in the blue smoke of spring. 

 Everything was ready. The spiles were driven 

 and the white, pent-roofed pails hung. The wood- 

 house end of the sugar house was full to the top of 

 four-foot sticks ready for the boiling. Even the 

 pan was full of sap, for there had been a slight run 



