In the first place it was not a camp at all—according to my idea—for what the people at the farm-house where I was visiting, called the camp was a house—a very rough one, but still a house. I expected to find tents and big camp-fires under the trees. I found a fire, but it was in the house. It was in February that I went out to the camp, and although there was still snow on the ground, the day was mild and pleasant. The men were all at work when I arrived, and I wandered about, looking at everything and asking questions. The camp was in the middle of a large grove of sugar-maple trees, and in each of the large trees a hole had been bored, and a little spout, made of a piece of elder wood, with the pith scooped out, had been inserted in each hole. Through these spouts the sap was dripping into pans and wooden troughs, placed at the foot of each tree. As fast as these pans and troughs were filled they were taken to the house and emptied into boilers that were suspended over the fire. Here the sap boiled away at a great rate, and the men took turns in stirring it so that it should not burn. I found that this sugar-making was quite a tedious operation, as the sap had to be boiled twice, and a great deal of care and time was spent upon it before it cooled down into the hard, light-brown maple sugar of which most boys and girls are so fond. But I saw enough to make me understand the principles of the business. I found that when the sap began to rise in the trees, in the early spring, there was always enough of it to supply the needs of the tree, and a good deal besides to supply the needs of the sugar-makers. I watched all the processes, and tasted the sap when it first flowed from the tree and in all its different stages. And when I went back to the farm-house, early in the afternoon, I thought that it would be a great thing to have a grove of sugar-maples, and to be able to make one’s own sugar, and to be independent, in that respect at least, of the grocery-store. I had not yet taken a meal at the farm-house, for I had arrived that day after breakfast, and had gone out to the camp soon afterward. When supper-time came—and long before in fact—I was very hungry, having had but a lunch in the woods. And so I ate bravely of the good things that were so bountifully spread upon the table. But when I came to drink my tea, which was sweetened with maple-sugar, I did not like it. And the more I drank the less I cared to own a sugar-maple grove, and brighter and brighter became the visions of the grocery store, with its savory smells, and its great bins of sugar from the sugar-canes of Louisiana and Cuba. When supper was over I had not finished my cup of tea, but I had changed my mind completely about the desirableness of owning a sugar-maple grove, and making one’s own sugar. SILVER-PLATING.