Harper's Round Table, March 31, 1896

by Various

A sugar party is very elastic so far as numbers are concerned. It may be either small or large, although as a rule the old principle of the more the merrier holds good here. Both sexes are represented, and the only essential qualities in a guest are a social spirit and a good digestion.

The place to thoroughly enjoy sugar-making is on a farm where they "sugar off" half a dozen times a day. It is the usual thing for a party of young people to arrange for a visit to a farm-house in the height of the sugar season, and they throw themselves into the fun of the hour with an abandon which proves the injustice of the charge that we, as a people, like the English, take our pleasure sadly. The girls and boys inspect the flowing of the sap, form a merry escort around the sledge that conveys the sap to the sugar-house, hang about the golden syrup boiling and bubbling in the big evaporator, and it is a noisy and jubilant crowd that gathers around the tin pans filled with snow, upon which is poured the smoking syrup that is, by contact with the snow, transformed into that delicious compound, "maple wax."

Three or four young people, each armed with a fork, may gather about a small pan, where the syrup lies in golden arabesques upon the white snow. It is very pretty to look at, very good to taste, and very sticky to handle. Unless it has been boiled to a point of brittleness where it snaps when touched by the fork—and this is unusual—it will cling to the tines in a fashion that gives new and literal meaning to the words, "Linked sweetness long-drawn out." The experienced sugar-eater has learned enough to give a dexterous turn of the fork that twists the wax about the prongs in a compact morsel, while the green hand struggles with the strung-out portion that falls to his share, and is forced to make desperate appeals for a knife or a spoon to break the tenuous fragment.

Even when the wax is on the fork all trouble is not over. The next thing is to eat it, and to achieve this operation with the grace and dignity one would desire is well-nigh impossible. The subject of the experiment looks at her fork and wonders whether it is better to nibble at the sugar or to make one huge mouthful of the whole lamp of delight. Woe be to her if she pursues the former course! Unless the sugar is exceptionally crisp, she will find that she has attached to her teeth one end of an unbreakable thread that stretches as do the fibres of a stringy Welsh rarebit. She understands how the spider feels when he spins a never-ending filament.

Under these circumstances she will probably find her chief consolation in the spectacle of her neighbor, who has attempted to take all the sugar on his fork at a single mouthful. He has sunk his teeth into the sugar, and it holds them as closely as it adheres to the fork. He struggles vainly to loosen his teeth or to withdraw the tines. Not until he casts dignity to the winds, and taking the fork in both hands, drags on it with main strength, does he release himself even partially. Then, as the sugar melts in his mouth, he finds himself free once more.

It will readily be imagined that with such scenes as these taking place all over the room there is no lack of fun. The amusement may not spring from a very high mental source, but it is pure, innocent jollity, and everybody enjoys it.

No one knows how much sugar he can devour, and live to tell the tale, until he has been on a Vermont farm in sugaring-time. At each sugaring off he will eat so much that he will declare he never wishes to see maple-sugar again so long as he lives. Nevertheless, when the syrup is ready to sugar off again, he is waiting to take his place among the rest and eat and eat until he is once more satiated. And this performance he repeats half a dozen times a day. Many persons claim that maple-sugar thus eaten makes them drowsy, but the fresh outer air soon dispels such sleepiness and gives them an appetite for more sugar.

One of the indispensable items of a sugaring off is a dish of pickles. The palates that have been surfeited with the cloying sweetness crave the relief of the acid. The advocates of the pickle-jar will assure you that after a pickle or two one can eat as much sugar as if he had not tasted it before, and a little observation and experiment leads one to believe that the theory is correct.

A pleasant variety is made by sprinkling the meats of butternuts, walnuts, or hickory-nuts on the snow, and covering these with the syrup, thus making a toothsome maple nut candy.

All these dainties are sampled at different intervals during the day in every household where sugar is made, but when evening comes there is usually a gathering of the young people at one or another farm-house. The country folk who have social instincts have little terror of long walks, and they think nothing of tramping a mile or more "across lots" over rough pasture-land, or along frozen roads, to a neighbor's where there is to be a sugar party. At such a function there are no refreshments demanded except the "maple wax" and pickles. Formality is altogether lacking. The guests gather about a long table, on which stand the milk-pans full of snow, and dip the syrup from the one big kettle boiling on the stove.