And now we are at the 'boiling place.' Two strong beech crotches are driven into the ground, about twelve feet apart, and a strong pole is laid over them, some five feet from the ground. The huge back-log was the butt of that tremendous beech you see lying just at the top of the knoll. The cauldron you see is filled with the fresh sap two or three times a day, and before filling each time, the boiling liquid is dipped out into the largest kettle alongside of it, and that in turn is emptied into a smaller one, that no time may be lost in boiling it away. Taste the syrup in this smaller kettle; it is almost molasses. Try on that 'neck-yoke' and come, let us help carry sap before dinner. The spiles you see sticking from augur-holes in every maple are made of young sumacs, which are sawed off the right length, and then the pith is punched out with a wire. The clean white-pine buckets, without bails, into which the sap drips from the spiles, are made expressly for this use, and so is that enormous hogshead where the sap is poured before it is strained for the cauldron. For the present let us to dinner. Well, Herr Peter, although our dinner was laid on a beech log, and our table-cloth nothing but a piece of coarse linen, and our knives and forks such as Adam and Eve used before us! was it not excellent! Wie schmackt es! _How smacked it!_ as it passed through our devouring jaws; and how sweet was the pure spring water from the bright tin dipper! Now for a quiet smoke on the plank settle in the bough-house, while Joe and Hiram are getting ready to 'sugar off.' Here, if there comes up a storm, they sit and watch the kettles; and sometimes when the weather is clear they sit up all night. So at last you _do_ love a cigar better than a meerschaum? I confess it is the same with me! How old DEIDRICH would frown, if he heard such an admission from those who boast as we do the pure _Deutchen-blut_, the true Dutch blood!