PHASES OF FARM LIFE 241 



boys is more play than work. In the Old World, 

 and in more simple and imaginative times, how 

 such an occupation as this would have got into 

 literature, and how many legends and associations 

 would have clustered around it! It is woodsy, and 

 savors of the trees; it is an encampment among 

 the maples. Before the bud swells, before the 

 grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the 

 sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost ; 

 a sap-run is the sweet good- by of winter. It de- 

 notes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of 

 the day fully balances the frost of the night. In 

 New York and New England the time of the sap 

 hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week 

 or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten 

 days after. As the days and nights get equal, the 

 heat and cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A 

 day that brings the bees out of the hive will bring 

 the sap out of the maple-tree. It is the fruit of 

 the equal marriage of the sun and frost. When the 

 frost is all out of the ground, and all the snow 

 gone from its surface, the flow stops. The ther- 

 mometer must not rise above 38° or 40° by day, 

 or sink below 24° or 25° at night, with wind in 

 the northwest; a relaxing south wind, and the run 

 is over for the present. Sugar weather is crisp 

 weather. How the tin buckets glisten in the gray 

 woods; how the robins laugh; how the nuthatches 

 call; how lightly the thin blue smoke rises among 

 the trees ! The squirrels are out of their dens ; the 

 migrating water-fowls are streaming northward; the 



