Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/221

 States, and here if anywhere you may see the art practised in its perfection. There may be better sugar makers than C. S. Grimes, who has been at it for sixty years, but if so I do not know them. He began with the old-time black iron kettle, boiled in the open over a green wood fire. He has seen the business grow in the sugar house to the use of scientifically accurate evaporating pans where sap flows in a steady stream into one end and comes out syrup of a law-required density of eleven pounds to the gallon at the other, the whole working automatically; and in that time he has learned something of the whims of the maples themselves, though not all of them.

Much of the lore of the great gray trees he told me as we sat together on the broad doorstone of the little white farmhouse, steeping in the sun and looking down upon the peaceful valley and across to Haystack, hazed in the blue smoke of spring. Everything was ready. The spiles were driven and the white, pent-roofed pails hung. The wood-*house end of the sugar house was full to the top of four-foot sticks ready for the boiling. Even the pan was full of sap, for there had been a slight run