“But the winters! When there was a good crust on the snow you could start on your sled at the patch of woods on the top of the hill, nearly a mile away, and ride right into our barnyard. I’ve done it many a time. Skating! We could go almost straight away for miles on the river. One night when Jim Gilbert’s people were away from home I got permission to stay all night with him. I took my skates along and after supper we came down to the river and skated. The moon was full and it was almost as light as day. I must have been careless, for I skated too near an open place and broke through. Jim was just behind me, and, before he could stop or change his course, he had stubbed his toe on me and in he went, head first. The water was shallow, so there was no danger, but we had a mile to walk in our wet clothes, and all the way up hill. I remember that our clothes were frozen stiff when we reached Jim’s house. We built a roaring fire, stripped off our wet clothes and put on some that were dry, and then sat up until one o’clock eating chestnuts and popcorn and talking about what we would do when we were men. Jim had an idea that he would be a lawyer, but the last time I saw him he was selling tooth paste at the county fair. “In some ways spring in the country is not remarkably attractive. The fields are brown and bare and soggy, and the winds cannot fairly be called zephyrs. As the frost leaves the ground the roads become rivers of mud, and some of the “sinkholes” seem bottomless. Early spring is easily the most unlovely time of the year in the country, but even then life has its brighter side. With the first breath of the south wind the sap begins to leave the roots of the hard maples and the sugar season begins. “Did you ever work in a sugar-bush? No? Poor fellow! You’ve missed something worth while out of your life. I understand that nowadays they evaporate the sap in shallow pans; we used to boil it in a big iron kettle. We did not have many maples on our place, so I sometimes worked for Deacon Bouton, who had the next farm west of ours. He had a big sugar-bush, and we carried the pails of sap on neck-yokes. When we had a big run of sap we had to boil all night as well as during the day. I’ll never forget one night when we had a feast. There were two boys besides myself: Ed Bouton, the deacon’s son, and John Hammond. Ed had brought forty-five hen’s eggs and John added five goose eggs. We boiled the eggs in the sap, and the three of us ate those forty-five hen’s eggs and started on the goose eggs. For some reason we did not relish them. Possibly the hen’s eggs had taken the keen edge from our appetites.