grove in three is being worked this year. To begin with, there is
the investment in “sugar tools,” no light expense for the man of
small capital. Good sugar workers are not so common as they once
were, and require good wages when they are to be obtained at all.
It is customary to pay a man fifty dollars a month and his board,
and his wages run whether the sap does or not. A start may be made
and then adverse weather or the idiosyncrasies of the trees may
keep the gang waiting a week, or even three. Even the men hired by
the day get two dollars to two and a half. In some years the snow
is not deep and the run of sap steady and prolonged. Then the
farmer makes money. During other years the snow may be so deep that
it is necessary to shovel out the roadways in the grove and go from
tree to tree on snow shoes. Last year, owing to peculiar weather
conditions, there was but a light run of sap, and it was soon over,
lasting hardly three weeks. In consequence the crop was light. Yet
maple sugar is distinctly a luxury for which the demand is greater
than the present supply, and is likely to steadily increase. It is
probable that the planting of large areas to especially productive
trees on which the most scientific business methods were used
would result in large profits. The trouble is that the season of
production is short and all trees must be worked at the same time.
Moreover, it takes twenty years for a seedling maple to grow to
producing size, and the average investor does not care to wait that
long for the first of his returns. In any case, it is a matter for
the capitalist rather than the farmer, who does not usually look so
far ahead for returns on his money.
Along with the improvements in the sugar house have come many in
the methods of getting the sap from the trees. The pioneer method
was to “box” them. This meant cutting a receptacle in the tree
itself large enough to hold a pint or so of the liquid which ran
into it. Boxing, year after year, was destructive to the trees
which, nevertheless, survived a vast amount of it. It is probable
that boxing has not been carried on in the Vermont groves for more
than fifty years, yet there are trees standing to-day which show
marks of the old-time method. On what was known once as the Kathan
farm, just west of the Connecticut River in Dummerston, still stand
a few trees of what is believed to be the first grove in the State
from which white men made maple sugar in any quantity. Thirty-three
of these veterans were there in 1874, but now only nine remain.
They are gigantic trees, free of limbs to a great height and one at
least sixteen feet in circumference. At the base can be seen the
knotted, uneven growth covering the scars of nearly seventy years
of “boxing.” After the boxing method came the tapping iron, almost
as hard on the trees. A slanting kerf, an inch deep and four inches
long, was first made. Then the iron with a half-circle cutting
edge was driven in deep at the bottom of this to make a place for
the spout of hard wood, grooved with a gouge and finished with
draw-shave and pocket-knife. Troughs of white maple or basswood,
split in halves, dug out with the axe and smoothed with the gouge,
were used to catch the sap, which was gathered in hand-made pails
hung from a “sap-yoke” which rested on the bearer’s shoulders and
took the weight.
The boiling was in the big black iron kettle which the elder Grimes
remembers so well. It was hung by chains from a pole set up on two
crotched sticks. Beneath it were two big green logs between which
the fire was kept. Sugar houses were unknown and dry wood was rare,
yet with care a respectably clean sugar was made.
[Illustration: “But here is a sweetness that the tree almost bursts
to deliver.”]
A piece of wood taken from one of these trees in 1873 is still
preserved in Vermont. It is twenty inches by four, yet it shows
five boxing places, two deep in the wood and three that the later
growth of the tree had not been able to cover. Sugar was made from
these trees in 1764, and they were tapped each year by some member
of the Kathan family until 1862. One of the largest of these
trees was cut in 1858, and the number of concentric rings of growth
showed that nearly a hundred years had then passed since the tree
was first boxed for sap. In 1894 another was cut, having a box mark
only three inches beneath the surface of the wood, showing that in
this tree at least someone had gone back to the ancient method not
more than half a generation before the date of cutting the tree.
Probably scattered trees of the groves of a century and a half ago
still stand in other portions of the State, carrying deep in their
heart wood the scars of the old-time sugar making.
The Vermont laws against the adulterating of maple sap products are
now quite strict, and it is probable that original packages from
the State are reasonably sure to be what they are sold for. The
syrup weighing eleven pounds to the gallon is practically at the
point of saturation, a gallon weighing even an ounce more than this
showing a deposit of crystallized sugar. It was formerly considered
that the intermixture of cane syrup could not be detected, but
modern methods of chemical analysis show it, the ash from dried
and burned maple sugar being greater than that from dried and
burned cane sugar in that it, having not been recrystallized, still
contains other chemical constituents of the sap. These no doubt
contain the ingredients which go to make up the delectable flavor,
and those not yet isolated elements which help make the Vermonters
the big-hearted, big-souled people that they are. Yet the rich
golden brown color which most maple sugar has is not a quality of
the sugar itself, but due to impurities, harmless but unnecessary.
They come from tiny flecks of bark which fall into the sap or from
careless boiling. Before the sap gets to the can in the Grimes
sugar house it has been strained seven times. The iron kettle sugar
of the old days was sometimes almost black. Care in the handling
will give a syrup that is almost as colorless as water and a sugar
that is nearly white. Hence color in the final product by no means
indicates purity, though it may in no sense indicate adulteration.
The best syrup is a clear, viscous, pale straw-colored liquor, and
the sugar itself need not be much if any darker.
To an outsider the whole trip into the upper valley of the
Deerfield River is a delight. At Hoosac Tunnel the big train gets
tired of the long climb and plunges into the very heart of the
mountain. But the little narrow-gauge road takes up the ascent
most determinedly. The boy’s-size engine snorts and chu-chus up
astounding grades, winding into defiles where the mountains close
in on each side and almost squeeze the track into the river. At
some stations the stop is on such a slant that the engine puffs
and grinds for minutes before any progress at all is noticed.
The town comes down to see the struggle, and the small boys call
the conductor and engineer by their first names and rail at
their railroading. “Hey, Bill,” says one. “What’s your coffee
mill grinding to-day?” Then, as the imperceptible first motion
accelerates to a snail pace, they stroll along with the engine and
continue their chaff till the hills shut down and cut them off. Yet
after all, when you consider the grades, the curves and the stops,
the whole trip is made at a good pace, the twenty-four miles being
covered in about an hour and a half. Coming down is coasting, and
the speed is limited only by the requirements of safety. Vermont
whole-heartedness runs through the train chaff, however, and
the favorite salutation is “neighbor.” To take the trip is like
attending a lodge meeting, and long before the final stop you feel
a friendly interest in everybody present. If you don’t know most
of the others by their first names it is because you have not kept
your ears open. At this season at least you learn how strong a
hold the good old business of sugar making still has on the hearts
of the people of the Green Mountain State, and the gossip of the
groves and farms is yours without the asking. The free, wholesome
air of the mountains is in it all, and as you breathe more and more
of it you feel that the good old-time New Englander does not need
to come back. He is there, up under the purple shadow of Haystack,
talking maple sugar and drawing its essence of vitality from the
white wood of mighty trees that clothe mountain slopes with the
kindly peace of their stately groves.
XIII
NATURE’S MEMORIAL DAY
_How Earth and Sky Observe this National Holiday_
Up to the brow of Cemetery Hill
The serried battle ranks still press to-day.
The saxifrages in Confederate gray
Charge to the robin’s bugle, piping shrill.
In Union blue the sturdy violets still
Shoulder to shoulder in the battle sway
And, rank on rank, the rising onslaught stay,
While cheers of song-birds through the woodland thrill.
And yet peace reigns, and both the gray and blue
Mingled in garlands on the field will lie
Marking a soldier’s grave, or blue or gray,
Shoulder to shoulder waiting, who shall say?
We only know they wait beneath the sky
While garlands deck them, wet with tears of dew.
In my town the little “God’s Acre” in which the pioneers snuggled
to sleep under the protecting shadow of their first rough church
has grown over hill and dale to a score of acres. The church long
since moved out of its own yard, as if to give the pioneers room,
yet lingers gently within a stone’s throw, as a mother waits
within sound of her children. Where once the rough oak timbers
stood squarely upon their field-stone foundations century-old
graves stretch restfully side by side, and gray lichens cling
so close to the blue slate of headstones that the twain become
one, and the very names of the sleepers beneath are hidden and
forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder these old stones stand and lean
friendlily one on another, as brothers to whom the kindly elder
years have brought surcease of all differences. The early settlers
were bold in their beliefs and battled sturdily for them while it
was time to fight. The ancient records and traditions will tell you
of stern warfare waged between man and man and clan and clan. Then,
the battles well fought, they laid themselves down side by side in
a forgiving neighborliness that is the most lasting inscription on
the plain stones that mark their rest. Peace is most secure between
those who have fought best, and the Memorial Day spirit is no mere
growth of our later years. It was born in the scheme of all good,
just as battles were.
Nature voices for us only kindly memories. Whatever the chisel
may have graven on these rude slate stones, the kindly sun and
rain and the slow sobbing of the earth’s bosom under frost and
thaw have taught them “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” till they voice
it in phrases which none who pass may fail to read. The lichens
have written it and the actions of the slate speak louder than the
words of the inscriptions. We in our Memorial Day offerings tell
for a brief hour only what the good gray earth has been saying
the year through, and we say it best, as she does, in flowers and
tears. Nature’s Memorial Days began with the first grave and have
continued ever since. Ours, which began with our mourning for dead
heroes of the Civil War, has extended since to those of all wars
and moves yearly nearer to Nature’s all-forgiving, all-loving
teaching. Our lesson will be complete when we understand that all
who have lived are heroes and that toward all who are dead we
should bear constant loving remembrance. The sun and the rain lead
the gentler things of earth to this all through the old cemetery
where, since the pioneers of the town, have come the heroes of the
Revolution, of 1812, the Civil War, and of countless un-uniformed
battles of daily life before and since.
All the morning of Memorial Day children, and often their elders,
glean from field and wood, from garden and greenhouse, flowers
for the decking of graves, and later the thinning ranks of Grand
Army men march to martial music and place upon the graves of
dead comrades the flag for which they fought and garlands of
remembrance. For these the mowing fields give gladly the white and
gold of their buttercups and daisies, the hillsides the blue of
their violets, the woodlands the feathery white and glossy green
of the smilacina. It always seems as if these blossomed their best
for the occasion. But beyond all other flowers in profusion and
beauty for the ceremony is the lilac. This shrub, I am convinced,
knows that its best service to man is in garlands for Memorial Day,
and rarely does it fail in the service. There come years in which
the spring is cold and backward and blossoming shrubs are weeks
behind their accustomed time of bloom, but the lilacs press bravely
forward, hopeful even at the very last moment, and manage to put
forth flowers by the thirtieth of May. On other years, like this,
all things are three weeks or more ahead of season, yet the lilacs
hold steadfastly on, and when their need is felt there they are to
be gathered in armfuls from willing bushes that go cheerfully at
work again to repair the wrecked stems and provide buds for the
garnering of another year. The lilac should be the flower of poets
and heroes, and as we are all that, however humble our heroism or
however shyly hidden our poetry, it is fitting that it should be
commonest for the decorations of Memorial Day.
For the lilac, for all its buxom profusion and its ability to take
care of itself in neglected fields and woods where the garden in
which it was once delicately nurtured is grown up to grass, the
house to which it belonged is crumbled to ruin, and wild woodland
things crowd and choke it, is of royal lineage. In the garden of
what prince of prehistoric days it first bloomed I cannot say,
but it was beloved of Babylonian kings and mingled its perfume
with that of the roses in Persepolis when Persia was a seat of
learning and refinement, while western Europe was yet to emerge
from savagery and America was not even a dream. There Jamshid,
founder of the then mighty city, Rustam the hero who defended it
all his life from barbarian invaders, Sadi the poet in his rose
garden, Omar with his “jug of wine and thou” watching the stars
and writing his fond, cynical, keen verses, and even Genghis Khan
and Tamerlane, barbarian conquerors out of the mysterious farther
east, must have sat beneath its shade from time to time as the
centuries dreamed on and dreamed their own dreams of conquest, of
love or of service, under the spell of its fond, pervading perfume.
Dreams these should be, of love, if you will, of constancy, and
of hope and yearning toward high ideals, for all these breathe
from the true heart of the lilac to-day, nor has the passing of
three centuries changed the subtle essences of the flower or
their meaning one whit. How far these have gone to the changing
of the hearts of men in that time one may not say, but surely the
fragrance sighs through the Gulistan and the Rubaiyat and the
culture and refinement that the Persia of those days has sent down
the years to us in their records was greater than that of any
other nation of the time. From this mother land of the lilac spread
westward the belief in one God. There the learned men taught to
princes and nobles a due reverence for parents and aged persons, a
paternal affection for the whole human species and a compassionate
tenderness even for the brute creation. There before the sovereign
in state might appear the humblest peasant for justice, and the
youth of the land were taught fortitude, clemency, justice,
prudence, to ride a horse, use the bow and speak the truth. With
the odor of these things that of the lilac filled the air there
through centuries of springs. What more fitting flower could we
lay upon the graves of our heroes, whether of the Civil War or the
Revolution, whether wearing the blue or the gray, or the homespun
of the battle of everyday workshop, farm or home? There is more of
symbolism in its giving than we heed. With the loving remembrance
of friends of to-day goes a greeting from heroes of an age long
gone but not forgotten.
There is no remembrance of civilization, no aura of human nobility
about the smilacina, which in my regard comes next as a flower
for Memorial Day. Hardly the violet could be more modest. Its
tiny spike of white bloom is borne only a few inches high on a
two-leaved stalk, the leaves in shape and gloss reminding one
of the florist’s smilax, whence probably the name. Yet its very
simplicity makes it peculiarly a flower for garlands. The leaves,
growing on the stalk itself, make just the right amount of green,
and a nosegay or a wreath of smilacina alone has a dainty beauty
that few flowers could thus give. The misty white blooms on the
glossy green seem like shattered tears of gentle spirits of the
woods bringing their tribute of sorrow to the fallen heroes.
Nor are the blooms of this plant which the school children have
gathered and which the veterans have placed on the graves the only
ones that are there. All along one side of this cemetery the woods
themselves press their sheltering beauty, and in them the earth
is garlanded with smilacina blooms. Passing from Memorial Day
observances to these I often think that the forest itself decorates
in honor of its own whose resting places would be otherwise
unmarked. It may be for the people of an elder race all other
traces of whom are lost that the tiny, lovely flowers group their
white and green, or for the humbler creatures of the wood who would
otherwise lack tokens of mourning, but the smilacina certainly
decorates the mounds in all woodlands with mystic tracings which
have their own meaning. But it does more than this. In modest
beauty it slips shyly out from the sheltering friendliness of
the pines and stands with bowed head on many a dewy Memorial Day
morning by such mounds as it may reach, in all gentle friendliness.
Shyer yet are the saxifrages which sometimes stand near by. These
I have seen, clad as if in Confederate gray, by a mound which
veterans had marked with a Union flag and along which tiny blue
violets nestled lovingly. So, surely, they stand in mute respect
and nestle as lovingly by many another spot where the remembered
one fought as bravely beneath another flag. Long ago the good brown
earth taught the blue and the gray to thus fraternize, and though
we forgot it for a time the lesson came soon back to us with
renewed force. The saxifrages and the smilacina have not ventured
far out of the all-sheltering wood, but the Confederate gray is
borne all over the score of memorial acres by the wild immortelles,
everlasting, as the children call them, and no caretaker’s rake or
lawnmower can keep these down, or clip the violets so close that
their blue fails to nestle lovingly where heroes lie. All over the
place from spring until autumn these two set their garlands side by
side, as do those who mourn on the one Memorial Day of the year.
Thus constant are the sun and rain and the tiny herbs of the brown
earth.
As the boldest soldiers in the fray held oftenest the foremost
ramparts and felt themselves fortunate in their position, so I
think it must be with those veterans who rest nearest the brow of
the hill, where it seems as if they could look forth over miles of
beautiful forests to the blue hills which are other ramparts on
the horizon. Here of an early morning of this misty May they might
well think they saw gray troopers form and advance in battalions
that sweep down from the hills to eastward and charge over the
treetops of the vale below. Through the distance they can hear the
bugle calls of thrushes, and with trained ears thus know in what
formation the advance will be made and when. Well may they feel
the old-time thrill of desperate conflict as the advance sweeps up
their hill and the misty gray legions swarm over it until the fight
must need be hand to hand. Yet rarely does a day pass without final
victory for the blue. The misty legions fall back and vanish before
the flashing cavalry of the sun and the blue battalions of the
clear sky swarm forth and drive the enemy in full retreat before
them. Thus to them again out of the shades may come Gettysburg, or
Antietam, or Port Hudson.
I like best, though, to think of them here as resting in camp with
no thought of battles past or to come, the mists that rise meaning
no more than the smoke of comrades’ campfires, the bird bugle calls
only those of the day’s routine. From a hundred treetops they may
hear the robins sound the reveille. From their hilltop these bugle
notes should wake even the soundest sleepers. No other bird is so
well fitted for this call. There is a sprightly persistence in the
robin’s song of a morning, a recurrence of rollicking refrain
which reminds one strongly of the awakening notes of the bugle as
they ring through the camp when the last of the night watches is
ended and the new day calls all to be up and stirring. The robins
are peculiarly the buglers of the reveille. No bird sings earlier,
and when the full chorus is in swing there is little chance for any
other bird to be heard. No wonder the sun gets up betimes.
The day calls, the assembly, the retreat, the mess call and a score
of others are left to other birds than the robins. The thrush may
pipe them. Grosbeak, tanager or warbler may trill the familiar
melodies for all these, and a host of others sing at any hour of
the day in tree or shrub or in the pine woods that stand in a
phalanx, like a company under arms, pressing close up to the brow
of the hill. Sometimes I hear these in the sweet, flowing warble
of the purple finch which is not rare hereabouts, but more often
in the notes of the warbling vireos which frequent the tops of
the shade trees. These are all-day buglers, piping clear for all
occasions in firm, rich, continuous notes of whose meaning there
can be no doubt, once you have learned the calls. Nearing these
and seeing the white marble of the newer comers stretch far beyond
the slate headstones, over hill and dale, it is not difficult to
believe these indeed the tents of an army corps and to think I
hear in response to the bugle the marching tread of feet that have
been resting long. The tramp of the boys in blue on Memorial Day,
as they march and countermarch, passing from station to station,
the ringing call of the bugle that sang across Southern fields all
through Grant’s campaign could not seem much more real.
When the busy day is ended it is the wood thrush that sings taps.
The dropping sun reflected from polished white marble lights
campfires from tent to tent, fires that shall burn low to glowworm
embers presently, their smoke curling up in night mists from the
dewy ground. It is then that the friendly forest seems to crowd
closer as if to surround the camp with a host of faithful guards.
Then out of its violet dusk rings the call of the wood thrush, a
call full of gentle mystery, of faith and longing, at once so sad
and so sweetly hopeful that it seems to voice all human sorrow
for mortality and all human, wistful belief in immortality. “Come
to me,” it pipes in tintinnabulating richness out of the deepening
dusk. “Good night; good night; all’s well; good night.” No sweeter
music than taps ever rang from bugle or from throat of wood thrush
when deepening twilight falls upon this white-tented corner of
fame’s eternal camping ground. The buttercups that stray lovingly
among the graves of the pioneers give up their gold to the sky that
sends its tears to dew their round eyes. All day the good gray
earth and the brave blue sky have held memorial service, and as the
last note of taps rings from the throat of the thrush deep in the
sheltering wood the night takes up the service with wet eyes.
XIV
BIRDS OF CHOCORUA
_Some May Songsters of the Frank Bolles Hinterland_
To all who love the lore of woodland life the country up around
Chocorua lake and mountain must always be haunted by the gentle
spirit of Frank Bolles, whose books, all too few, breathe the very
essence of its perennial charm. To nature lovers who come year
after year to the place these books are a litany, and all the bird
songs are echoes of the notes he loved. Nor need there be an hour
of the twenty-four in this region, in May, in which the birds
do not sing. No night is too dark for the wistful plaint of the
whip-poor-wills, wandering voices that seem born of the loneliness
of the bare places in the hills before man was. To the wakeful ear
their sorrow hardly seems soothing, yet when drowsiness comes from
long days in the mountain air the whip-poor-will’s plaint is a
primal, preadamite lullaby that as surely sings to sleep as does
the cadenced sorrow of the wind in the pines or the minor murmur of
a mountain brook, intermittently tossed over the hill by the night
breeze. Often at nightfall the “clackety clack, cow, cow, cow” of
the yellow-billed cuckoo sounds through the Chocorua woods, as if a
lanternless watchman were making his rounds and sounding the hour
with his rattle. Often, too, some songbird will rouse from sleep
as if he heard the cuckoo watchman, going his rounds, pipe him a
sleepy bar or two of his day song, notes strangely vivid in the
perfumed darkness, then drowse again with the melody half finished.
But of all these the whip-poor-wills are most persistent and
loudest. They greet the dusk with antiphonal chant, and when they
finally follow the shadows to rest in the darkest wood the choir of
day takes their silence for its matin bell.
[Illustration: “The farmhouse where Bolles lived and loved the
woods and all that therein lived with him.”
_See page 197_ ]