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beautiful old city of York in England, called this 

 one in contempt 'Little Muddy York.' But after a 

 while it was given an Indian name, Toronto, and 

 for many years it got larger and larger, till at last it 

 had more people and more homes than old York. 

 At times woodsmen came and chopped down the 

 older trees to burn, but the grove where I stood was 

 not destroyed. After the land was divided by 

 fences we stood first in a farm, then in a garden, and 

 later the spot was turned into a park and nursery 

 for growing trees. It was a beautiful place and 

 citizens used to come to walk there and enjoy the 

 fresh air under the trees. One pleasant autumn 

 afternoon two friends were walking up and down the 

 path when I dropped a beautiful autumn leaf, 

 coloured with red and gold and green, on the shoulder 

 of one of the men. He picked it off and said 'What 

 a beautiful leaf, John.' 'It is indeed,' said the 

 other. 'Alexander,' he continued, 'you are a poet 

 and you must write a poem about our great country 

 and^the beautiful Maple Leaf, its emblem.' 'I will 

 try,' responded the one called Alexander, for it was 

 Mr. Alexander Muir, a public school teacher of 

 Toronto; and that was how the poem The Maple 

 Leaf Forever' came to be written." 



"You are forgetting yourself," said the Stove. 

 "You call yourself a Sugar Maple. Was sugar ever 

 made from your sap?" 



"Yes, many pounds of it. When I was small the 

 Indians tapped my older brothers and made sugar 

 to last them through the winter. Later when the 

 settlers had a weary struggle for existence, without 

 railways, without roads, without factories, and 

 without many things people now have, they made 



