MAPLE SUGAR MAKING. 167 
There are few scenes more impressively picturesque 
than the sugar camp-fire at night. The dancing blaze 
lights up the woods, and the objects stand out clear and 
distinct, or are thrown into deeper shadow by the flick- 
ering flame; they move about as the fire changes, and 
are both real and unreal. Some of the trees look like 
monster giants reaching their long and naked arms into 
the light, grasping for other arms—and the imagina- 
tion can make of them, trees or elves or hobgoblins. 
There is a weird look about the pale, dry leaves that 
still hang to the low limbs of some of the beeches, and 
one instinctively starts, if they rustle, as though it were 
the rustling of the garments of a ghost. The ancient 
Greeks believed that when they heard the rustling of 
dry beech leaves, a wood nymph was being born. Dur- 
ing these silent watches of the night, a pleasanter sound 
is the soft and gentle dripping of the sap as it falls into 
the buckets from the neighboring trees. Its drop, drop, 
is very musical, and lulls one like the regular ticking of 
the old clock at home. This even dropping of water is 
the true liquid melody, and falls upon the ear even 
more soothingly than the rippling gurgle of the rill. 
The charmed hour is just as the day begins to dawn. 
It is like enchantment to lie on the rude couch in the 
cabin and see the stars fade out in the far away 
heavens, or to watch the slowly shifting clouds above 
the net-work of tree-tops, until the trees themselves 
appear to be moving like masts and spars of many 
ships. Then the drumming of the partridge will 
awaken the echoes of the woods, and the robin will 
