MEMORIES OF THE 



where it was always kept, in a fruitless effort to pull them on. 

 Father had already greased his own and all our boots with a 

 mixture of tallow and lamp-black from the little quart kettle in 

 which he always kept the grease ready, the same now bronzed 

 and used as a match-safe on the mantle in my room. If the 

 boots would not go on I greased them inside and made a second 

 and usually more successful trial, picked up and returned to its 

 place the old calf-bound Bible, the reading of which I was not 

 to hear that morning, and sat down alone to the early breakfast 

 prepared exclusively for me. It was always a good one: ham 

 and eggs, creamed potatoes, fried pork and cream gravy, wheat 

 bread, corn bread, long, white nutcakes with cider apple-sauce, 

 coffee made from fresh browned barley, with thick cream — two 

 or three big cups — and topped off with a big, fat piece of 

 custard pie. I often suspected that the family breakfast which 

 came later, although it was enjoyed much more leisurely and 

 with Christian observances of saying grace, prayer and Bible- 

 reading, was often inferior to my own. 



Thus fortified, I started for the woods over the hubs or 

 through the mud, whichever it was, and generally had a roaring 

 fire under the pans before the sun was over the Pitkin hill. This 

 early start insured the ''boiling-in " of fifty or sixty pails of sap 

 before my father and brother or the hired man reached the 

 woods with the team, ready for the work of the day. With a 

 good run it was rushing business, and exciting as well. The 

 boiling must be pushed so as to keep storage room ahead, else 

 the sap got the start and the buckets ran over. The rapid click, 

 click, click of the dropping sap, particularly after sundown and 

 early in the morning, was sharp notice to us to hustle. It 

 meant gathering all day and boiling all night, rain or shine. 



Maple trees do not all give down sap alike. They are as 



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