54 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



curved white sepals, the three of hearts painted in 

 green upon their drooping corollas: the modest 

 poise of their pretty heads ; the faint sweet 

 breath with which they call the half-awakened 

 bees! To Wordsworth a snowdrop was "a 

 part of the sermon on the Mount." 



Even before the snowdrops come, the maples 

 begun to think of spring, and their red leaf- 

 scales and flower buds announce that the sap 

 has already mounted to the farthermost tip of 

 the branches, and sugar-making time is here. 

 It marks the first stage of the farm-year in the 

 woods, which are the best part of the farm- 

 garden. The sweetest harvest of the tem- 

 perate zone is that which drips from the 

 wooden spills driven into the maple's bole, into 

 the wooden trough below. Here is gardening 

 indeed, and a welding of many industries into 

 one. The troughs, to be proper sugar troughs, 

 of the kind that belong to the old days before 

 glucose and other abominations, are made by 

 leisurely winter firesides, by members of those 

 arts and crafts societies of the countryside 

 whose work is always beautiful since it is 

 always sincere and direct. The faint blue 

 reek of the sugarmaker's fire, diffused through 



