“All right. Try it next year.”
I did. But not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was early April before I got to the farm. But it had been a wintry March, and the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a few days in a February thaw. Anyway, it was worth trying.
Jonathan could not come with me. He was to join me later. But Hiram found a bundle of elder spouts in the attic, and with these and an auger we went out along the snowy, muddy road. The hole was bored—a pair of them—in the first tree, and the spouts driven in. I knelt, watching—in fact, peering up the spout-hole to see what might happen. Suddenly a drop, dim with sawdust, appeared—gathered, hesitated, then ran down gayly and leapt off the end.
“Look! Hiram! It’s running!” I called.
Hiram, boring the next tree, made no response. He evidently expected it to run. Jonathan would have acted just like that, too, I felt sure. Is it a masculine quality, I wonder, to be unmoved when the theoretically expected becomes actual? Or is it that some temperaments have naturally a certain large confidence in the sway of law, and refuse to wonder at its individual workings? To me the individual workings give an ever fresh thrill because they bring a new realization of the mighty powers behind them. It seems to depend on which end you begin at.
But though the little drops thrilled me, I [pg 028] was not beyond setting a pail underneath to catch them. And as Hiram went on boring, I followed with my pails. Pails, did I say? Pails by courtesy. There were, indeed, a few real pails—berry-pails, lard-pails, and water-pails—but for the most part the sap fell into pitchers, or tin saucepans, stew-kettles of aluminum or agate ware, blue and gray and white and mottled, or big yellow earthenware bowls. It was a strange collection of receptacles that lined the roadside when we had finished our progress. As I looked along the row, I laughed, and even Hiram smiled.
But what next? Every utensil in the house was out there, sitting in the road. There was nothing left but the wash-boiler. Now, I had heard tales of amateur syrup-boilings, and I felt that the wash-boiler would not do. Besides, I meant to work outdoors—no kitchen stove for me! I must have a pan, a big, flat pan. I flew to the telephone, and called up the village plumber, three miles away. Could he build me a pan? Oh, say, two feet by three feet, and five inches high—yes, right away. Yes, Hiram would call for it in the afternoon.
I felt better. And now for a fireplace! Oh, [pg 029] Jonathan! Why did you have to be away! For Jonathan loves a stone and knows how to put stones together, as witness the stone “Eyrie” and the stile in the lane. However, there Jonathan wasn’t. So I went out into the swampy orchard behind the house and looked about—no lack of stones, at any rate. I began to collect material, and Hiram, seeing my purpose, helped with the big stones. Somehow my fireplace got made—two side walls, one end wall, the other end left open for stoking. It was not as pretty as if Jonathan had done it, but “’t was enough, ’t would serve.” I collected fire-wood, and there I was, ready for my pan, and the afternoon was yet young, and the sap was drip-drip-dripping from all the spouts. I could begin to boil next day. I felt that I was being borne along on the providential wave that so often floats the inexperienced to success.
That night I emptied all my vessels into the boiler and set them out once more. A neighbor drove by and pulled up to comment benevolently on my work.
“Will it run to-night?” I asked him.