PREFACE 



IT was while sitting in his hay-barn study in the 

 Catskills and looking out upon the maple woods of 

 the old home farm, and under the maples at Riv- 

 erby, that the most of these essays were written, 

 during the last two years of the author's life. And it 

 was to the familiar haunts near his Hudson River 

 home that his thoughts wistfully turned while win- 

 tering in Southern California in 1921. As he pictured 

 in his mind the ice breaking up on the river in the 

 crystalline March days, the return of the birds, the 

 first hepaticas, he longed to be back among them; he 

 was there in spirit, gazing upon the river from the 

 summer-house, or from the veranda of the Nest, or 

 seated at his table in the chestnut-bark Study, or 

 busy with his sap-gathering and sugar-making. 



Casting about for a title for this volume, the 

 vision of maple-trees and dripping sap and crisp 

 March days playing constantly before his mind, 

 one day while sorting and shifting the essays for his 

 new book, he suddenly said, "I have it! We'll call 

 it Under the Maples!" 



His love for the maple, and consequently his 

 pleasure in having hit upon this title, can be gath- 

 ered from the following fragment found among his 

 miscellaneous notes: "I always feel at home where 



'V 



