Ronald commenced his sugar operations early the next morning. With a small auger he bored several holes in each tree, two or three inches deep, and inclining upwards. These holes were about eighteen or twenty inches from the ground, and on the south side of the tree. Into each hole he drove a spile, which consisted of a piece of sumac, elder, or sassafras, with the pith bored out, and one end sharpened. The sap flowed through these spiles into the tubs or buckets placed to receive it. When Ronald came home from school, in the afternoon, he found he had collected several gallons of the sweet liquid, which he and the other boys removed to the house. A large iron kettle was filled with the sap, and placed over the fire. We are so accustomed to speak of “making” sugar, that it is possible the word sometimes misleads us. We cannot make sugar. The cane, the maple, the beet, and other plants, are our sugar factories, but they give us their saccharine treasures greatly diluted in water. We boil this water away, or evaporate it, and the solid sugar remains—and that is the way we “make” sugar. As fast as the water evaporated in Ronald’s kettle, new sap was added, so that the mass did not thicken much that evening.
The next morning, Ronald again emptied his buckets, which were partly filled. The kettle was kept over the fire, through the day, the sap being turned in as fast as room was made for it by evaporation. In the afternoon, when the liquid had thickened to a syrup, Mrs. Page removed it from the fire, and strained it through woollen, and then suffered it to cool and settle. In the evening, the boiling was resumed, under Ronald’s direction, the white of an egg and a little milk being thrown into the kettle, to clarify the compound. The scum was carefully removed as it rose to the surface, and then the syrup was boiled with a gentle fire until it began to grain. All hands were now called into the kitchen, and the poetry of sugar-making commenced in earnest. Some of the children had provided themselves with pieces of ice hollowed out upon the upper surface, like saucers, into which a ladle full of the delicious liquid was dropped, when it immediately assumed the consistency of wax. Others dipped snow-balls into the “liquid sweetness,” or dropped the syrup into cold water, in which it assumed the waxy form; while the older ones were content to eat their “maple honey” out of plain saucers. The syrup was by this time hard enough to be taken off the fire. And now it had to be stirred vigorously until it was cool enough to cake, when it was dipped into little round fluted moulds. The grain now quickly hardened, the molasses drained off, and the boys had a good supply of prime maple sugar the next morning.
The next morning was Saturday, and as the day was fine, and the maple sugar fever was now fully developed, when Oscar proposed a visit in the afternoon to a “sugar camp” about a mile distant, there was a general response in favor of the suggestion, among the young folks, and Marcus promised to go with them. When the party were about starting, after dinner, it was found that Jessie was not among them. Her brother Henry, too, whom Ronald had seen, on his way home from school, and invited, did not make his appearance—a circumstance ominously suggestive of “husk mats” to Jessie’s mind. Perhaps it was partly this fact, and not entirely her sense of duty to the family, that led her to insist on remaining at home and doing her part of the Saturday afternoon’s work, although Marcus and Mrs. Page both urged her to join the party. She had her reward, however, in an approving conscience, whichever may have been the motive of the act of self-denial.
The “sugar camp” which the young people visited that afternoon, belonged to one of their neighbors, who had about a hundred and fifty maple trees. They found the man and one of his sons engaged in collecting and boiling down the sap. The kettles were suspended by chains and hooks attached to a stout pole, which was supported by two crotched posts. There was a lively fire under the kettles, which was often replenished by wood that had been seasoned and split. During the boiling process, it is necessary to have some one on the ground night and day, and so they eat and sleep in the camp, and there is no rest until the work is done. A rude shed was erected, opposite the fire, for their protection. The side towards the fire was open, for the sake of the warmth, and for convenience in watching the boiling. The floor was thickly carpeted with straw, and here the men sometimes took a nap when weary. One of the men in the engraving is represented as bringing sap, and the other is blowing the candy or wax, to ascertain how far the boiling has advanced.
Marcus and his companions passed an hour or two very pleasantly in the camp, chatting with the men, watching their operations, and occasionally taking a sip of the delicious syrup. Meanwhile Jessie, by virtue of their absence, got the first reading of the “Home Wreath,” which made its appearance in the afternoon. Under the editorial head, she found the inquiry she had sent to the editress, appended to which was the following reply:
“Our correspondent is right. To circulate evil reports about another, without a good object in view, is wrong, even if the reports be true. Those who do this from a habit of tattling, or to gratify an idle curiosity, or from envy or malice, or from no cause whatever, are guilty of scandal. We have no right to publish the evil deeds of others, unless there is a prospect that we can accomplish good by doing so. There are several ways in which our correspondent can prove this to the satisfaction of her young friends, if they possess ordinary candor.
“1st. She can prove it from the Bible, by such passages as these: ‘Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people.’[[3]] ‘Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause.’[[4]] ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’[[5]] ‘Speak evil of no man.’[[6]] There are many other passages, enjoining the same duty.
[3]. Lev. 19:16.
[4]. Prov. 24:28.