172 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
ing out on the shady side of the trees. Occasionally 
you find a beautiful white-bellied deer mouse drowned 
in the half-filled buckets. 
The housekeepers of the woeds have everywhere put 
down carpets, whose warp of green is filled in with the 
woof of bright blossoms. 
The ferns have unwound their downy coils, and their 
spreading fronds fill the air with an herby perfume. 
The thrifty green leeks look better than they taste, and 
taste better than they smell. Everywhere the ground 
is decorated with erythroniums, trilliums, dicentras, 
spring beauties and cardamines. But these esthetic 
attractions are not the only objects of interest to at 
least the younger members of the sugar makers. 
Where is the country boy that does not know, as well 
as the squirrel does, where everything grows that is 
good to eat or to gnaw upon? The aromatic black birch, 
the young wintergreen, the fragrant spice bush and 
slippery elm all belong to his out-door larder. 
The chief profit of these few days of pleasant labor 
in the woods does not lie in the amount of sugar made, 
although the yield may be abundant, and it is the most 
healthful and toothsome of sweets—the money value of 
the product is the least part; but it consists in what 
the mind has absorbed of the spirit of nature by this 
closer contact with her; the imagination has been fed 
on wholesome food; the love of the country has been 
nourished, every physical sense has been quickened and 
strengthened, and the mind has been made richer by 
a better knowledge of the real living things of earth. 
