Harper's Young People, March 8, 1881 / An Illustrated Weekly

SUGARING OFF. —Drawn by W. R. Yeager.
Well, yes, Jerry, remarked Salina Meadows, old Mr. Wire'll be glad to have anybody come to see him that knows as much about sugar as you do.
It's all the hobby he's got, said her brother Phin. He makes the best maple sugar in all these parts. Whitest and cleanest. Biggest lot of it, too.

I've heard him say, added Rush Potts, that no man was ever too old to learn. Glad we could bring you along.
There isn't much about sugar I don't know, replied Jerry Buntley, modestly, with a pull at his dog-skin gloves to make them fit tighter. You just ought to see a real sugar plantation once.
I would like to, said Hannah Potts, all the red in her rosy face coming to the surface to meet the wind that blew in her face from the direction of old Mr. Wire's great forest on the hill-side.
They were all cuddling down in Elder Meadows's great box sleigh, and Phin Meadows was putting the sorrel span along the road in a way that made their bells dance lively enough, for the March thaw had only just begun, and the sleighing was capital.
Jerry Buntley had told them more about sugar that day than they had ever heard before. It was a great treat to be invited to a maple-sugaring at old Mr. Wire's, and Jerry's country cousins were glad of having something worth while to take with them by way of payment; that is, they were glad to take Jerry.
He was glad to go, and he talked sugar until every soul in the sleigh thought he could taste candy, and Phin found himself comparing the color of his sorrel team to that of the five pounds his mother sent back to Barnes's grocery store, because, as she said, She wasn't going to pay any 'leven cents a pound for building sand.