The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1904-06-11
sUGARING OFF.


zz Il pity the woman, who being city born and
bred, has never known the delights sugarng
Did you ever go in sugar bush in the edge of
forest when south winds blowing with soft mes
sage from the coming spring? you smell that
faint sweet odor from the pot swung, gypsy
fashion, the strapping fire of beechwood and
mlnghng with the smell of its own pungent smoke?
If you have you have forgotten it; and along
about the middle of March when there comes freeze
and then a thaw, and then big soft flakes Of snow
gently sitting down. and mild breath south,
some way you find yourself pausing over your law
briefs or your contracts ledgers looking
away into the depths of maple forest, whose
trees the deep drifts OF still lie smuggling close
to the brown earth. You smell doors Of tree,
of intermngled sap smoke and you find yourself
presently wondering whether they still make sugar in
Uncle JoePs bush in the southeast woods across the
meadow.
Do You remember when you used sugar off, in
your mothers kitchen? What event that was!
You with the other children were given milk mans and
Tin dlppers and directed to go the trees in
the orchard where the clean and pure. You
remember, do not, how you scooped up the snow
and filled your pan and patted it down hard, and
smoothed it with the bottom of dipper? Then you
romped back to the kitchen where mother or grand
mother Or Aunt Susan shaving a cake of maple
sugar to put the fire to melt How greediv Won
watched those soft curling, bits of sweet
ness fall beneath the gstening onto the board,
Lou begged Tor just one little lump, if you didn't
get it, you stole it.
Then, when Aunt Sue scraped up all that luscious
heap into an iron kettle and put just little
TO mosten it, and set it to boil you crowded round
the stove begging the privilege tasting on
snow or in the water to see if it And when
Aunt Sues practiced detected approach of the
waxing point and permitted dip your spoon
in the molten bubbing golden liquid and drip it into
your Of tracing stars and
cabalistic signs it slowly dropped you were the
proudest chap there And then of rapture
when you plunged your tined fork mass of waxed
and turning and wreathing it around your forb
brought it to watering mouth. Do you remember
it? Was ever nectar and ambrosia so sweet to the
gods? Do all tutti-fruitis your bsque tortons
your nesselrode buildings of approach
vor for richness, for satisfaction? Ah That was
the quintessence the apotheoss of sweetness.
But the bush itself was the Mecca of your hearts
deslre IN maple sugar days When the mysterious stir
ngs of life felt the naples and Uncle Joel
permitted you to go round with the hired men and
and watch them tap the trees adjust buckets it
was more to you than to London in these
days And watched svery juices ooze slowly
maple trunks with as much eagerness as Won
watch the ticker to-day. And when the OVERLOOKING
buckets ernped into great cauldron the cru
chile which was to change the silver 70 eold and Inc
swapping fire was kindled underneath your Joy was
greater, keener than to-day stocks and fall
Do you remember the sugarhouse, where on the
roughly hewn shelves the pans and tins in neat
array holding the slowly hardening harvest of
And how many time Uncle and the hired men had
to chase out with Do you
member your own little with the scalloped edges
which, as an especial privilege Aunt Sue permitted you
to fill with some of the overflow big kettle?
thousand times day you looked at them to see if
they hardening and when they turned
out onto the table before YOU you golden
brown with daintily curvng edges-tiny replicas of
the big cakes in the house-do you think that
all the French stuff at the bankers ban
quet could for moment be compared with those tri
umphs of your boyish skill
And then, when mother made pancakes for sup
per, and you shaved little cake with
butter on them, kissing and smoking from riddle-
ah, WE'LL Language fails does it not? court
convenes The bank and the stock exchange are open.
The office with its book shelves papers and ckers
comes back You are boy no longer. But you
and mechanically gather the briefs toward
the ticker, beckon the senographer you give fare
well glance in the mirror of memory. You see the
sturdy boy in striped ~mttens wooden comforter
and battered trudgng cross lots sugar
bush. You hear the south wind blowing You smell
the ntermngled fragrance of boiling sap and smoking
beech and find yourself wondering vaguely whether
they still make sugar in Uncle JoeIs bush
east woods the meadow.
Edith Sessions Upper in Philadelphia Press.
Knew When to Move.
The turtle is usually considered slow
creature, but the three which figure in this story
to o. harm