Part 10

"What kind of an experiment are you trying?" persisted the unsympathetic inquisitor.

"I am going to make maple syrup by a new process. I shall refine it by cold, instead of heat."

"What good will that do?"

"What good, woman? What good did it do Peary to go to the North Pole? I'll bet Mrs. Galvani stood around and asked just such fool questions when Galvani was making frogs' legs twitch with electricity. What good did that do! huh! It opened the way for all the modern developments of electricity. If it hadn't been for Galvani making frogs' legs twitch, we wouldn't have any Hydro-Electric Power scheme and you wouldn't be able to gossip with your neighbours over the telephone. Just you wait till I have pipe lines carrying the sap from every sugar bush to the Arctic regions, and am refining maple syrup for the whole world by the zero process. You won't ask me then, 'What's the use?' No, indeed! You will just stand 'round wearing diamonds and remarking that you don't see anything very wonderful about it all. Any one might have thought of it. It only happened that I thought of it first."

It will be a draught for Juno when she banquets. It will be a liqueur to be quaffed at the close of the feast from long-stemmed glasses of Venetian artistry. In each there shall be a flake of gold-leaf, beaten from the precious ores of Yukon or Larder Lake. This shall make it give its colour aright, and those who quaff----

"Well, of all the fool notions----" commented another observer.

It was thus, no doubt, that the people of Syracuse joshed Archimedes when he was fussing with the first lever, and making fool remarks about how he could move the world. Yet see what the lever has done for humanity. One after another the grown-ups about the place investigated what was going on, sniffed superior, and went in to warm themselves by the kitchen fire.

Surely this would be the opportunity of a lifetime. A description of frost-refined syrup could be made as eloquent as Ingersoll on whiskey, or Voorhees on the dog. Br-r-r--but it's cold! As the ice formed in the saucepans the thickening syrup was drained off with tender care, but not until the children came from school did I receive any sympathy. As they had no preconceived notions, it seemed quite logical and wonderful to them that syrup should be refined in this way. They forgot their cold fingers and toes in the kindling of their imaginations.

"We'll get a refrigerator to make our syrup with, won't we, father? That'll be better than an evaporator, won't it?"

"Certainly."

When in need of sympathy, go to the young! They are the only ones whose eyes can see the promised land. Moses was right in his dealings with the Israelites. He led them around through the wilderness until the older generation had died off. The older generation has been made up of doubters and knockers since the beginning of time. They all come from Missouri.

By this time it was so cold that the muse went on strike. For the last time the syrup was drained off from the ice, and with the children at my heels, I went into the house to enjoy my triumph. Since the truth must be told, this was a time when those who sat in the seats of the scornful were right. My frost-refined syrup was a sickishly sweet, colourless fluid of no distinction. In all probability it was not true maple syrup at all, but what the scientists call maple honey, a substance derived from maple sap, and which will not crystallise. Still, the Crowded Hour was not in vain. It enabled me to learn at first hand just what the pioneers of progress must have suffered when perfecting their inventions. It was a mere detail that my invention was no good.

March 15.--It is a great day, an expansive day, a large day. The first thing that impressed me about it was its size. I know it is not customary to describe a day in terms of space, but there seems to be no way out of it. This is not a day of the kind that can be enjoyed in a house, or a field, or even within the rim of the horizon. It reaches up to the great neighbourly sun, and spreads as wide as the imagination. It is a day that overwhelms me, but, on thinking it over, I have found the key to its mystery. When I got up this morning it was the sun that first fixed my attention. It came bustling over the horizon with the air of one about to start spring house-cleaning. It awakened the south wind, plucked the myriad icy fingers from the little rivulets and flooded the world with light and warmth. But it is hardly exact to speak of the sun as house-cleaning. It is really building a new home and using only the foundations and framework of the old. It is upholstering the hills, decorating the woods, and refurnishing the fields. In a few days it will recarpet the earth and tack down the green breadths with brass-headed dandelions. When that work is done we can get down to a consideration of the buds and flowers and birds and the exquisite little things of spring. To-day the invitation is to have an outing with the universe. Only the sun and his work are worth considering.

On a day like this it is hard to believe that the sun is ninety million miles away. Why, it is just up there in the sky, and is busy at our feet and all around us. I do not thank the astronomers for teaching me that it is so distant. I would much rather have the point of view of the Prince of Morocco, who protested:

"Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun, To whom I am a neighbour and near bred."

All through the winter the sun may have been as far away as learned men say, but to-day it is visiting with us. It is at work in the back yard and in the front yard and in the fields and woods. It is making the warm wind blow and the sweet sap flow, and making us all so happy that we drop into rhyme without noticing. But one cannot do justice to such a day as this even while sitting on a log in the sugar-bush and writing in the intervals of firing-up under the pan. To enjoy and describe it aright he should be able, in imagination, to sit on a mountain with his feet in a pleasant valley and his head aureoled with smoky haze. He should be conscious only of the kindly sun and of its footstool, the earth. His singing robes should be woven of golden sunshine, and--and--I guess I had better leave that sort of thing to the poets and put a few more sticks under the pan.

March 21.--Yesterday we began to cut the big maple into stove wood. The work was undertaken in a leisurely and proper way, and not with a view of piling up a record. This made it possible to take an interest in the tree as well as in the work, and there was much to repay observation. The tree stood over thirty inches on the stump, and, according to the rings of growth, must have been over one hundred and thirty years old; but the crosscut saw was in good condition, and as no one was in a hurry the work was not killing enough to be amusing. The butt of the tree was hollow and partly filled with the kind of rotten wood or punk that, I am told, was once used for tinder in the days of flint and steel.

After a couple of cuts had been dropped off, the hollow gave place to punk that was honeycombed with wormholes. The next cut brought to view a colony of winged ants, and in my ignorance of entomology I supposed that they were responsible for the catacombs in which they lived. They were all torpid when brought to light by the splitting of the block, but they soon came to life in the sunshine and began crawling about. The next cut explained the mystery of the tunnels in which the ants lived, for it revealed a colony of boring worms. They had evidently done the carpentering for the ants, who had merely cleared up after them and taken possession, from which it appears that "Old Grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmaker," is also the house-builder for the winged ants. The next cut carried us beyond the grubs into solid wood that was as sound as a bone. As the trunk at this point was still two feet in thickness, and was as straight as a lead pencil for over fifty feet, a council was held, and it was decided that, with good maple flooring at present prices, it would be a shame to devote such a tree to stove wood. After arriving at this decision we went to the top and resumed work. We started to saw just below the hole into which I had so often seen the black squirrels disappear. The cut revealed a hollow of about a foot in diameter and four feet in length that was worthy of a special study in itself. In the bottom there was about two feet of rich brown mould that had evidently been formed by the rotting of leaves that had been carried in for squirrel nests for many years. There was a nest of dry leaves that had evidently been in use during the past winter, and, as the entrance was so small, all the leaves that had gone to making the deposit of mould must have been carried in by the squirrels, who had probably been occupying this retreat for fifty years or more. What interested me most was the cleanness of the walls of the upper part of the hollow. I was assured that this could only have been done by bees that had occupied it at one time. The fact that there was no old comb or any other trace of these inhabitants was explained by the fondness of mice for wax. It is said that when a colony of bees dies out the mice very quickly clear away every trace of honey and comb. It was certainly an ideal hive for wild bees, and the only wonder is that some of the swarms that escaped last summer did not make a home in it.

The breaking-up of the mould brought to light a number of unexpected inhabitants in the shape of ordinary white grubs and wire-worms. They were likewise torpid, and waiting in cold storage for the return of spring. I also found some blue-bottle flies and a couple of very active black spiders that had evidently been living over fifty feet above the ground. Altogether, with its squirrels, ants, grubs, bugs, flies, and spiders, the big maple had been something of a world in itself.

While I was looking at the splendid trunk and wondering mildly whether it would be used to floor the chancel of a church or a profane dancing-hall, I suddenly recalled a delightful fable in blank verse that was written about fifteen years ago by Mr. John Lewis of The Star. It was never published, and I have lost my copy, but, fortunately, I can remember enough of it to show what a gem it was. He fabled, in good, workman-like verse, of a reporter who had been assigned to report many banquets until he loathed after-dinner speeches from the depth of his soul. At last, in desperation, he prayed that the gods would change him into a tree and place him in a forest, far from the haunts of men. The gods were kind and changed him into "a tree--a large deciduous tree." The transformed reporter, in his new-found happiness,

"Stretched his limbs And yawned away the weariness of years-- And cast a generous shade."

But the period of contentment did not last long. A lumber-man who was at work in the woods saw the big tree and, calling his workmen, they cut it down, hauled it to a sawmill, and ripped it into planks. Then it was seasoned and made into a great table that was placed in a banqueting hall, and the poor reporter

"Knew the bitter of the answered prayer."

Speaking of banquets, I happened to look towards the butt of the tree and found that two spotted woodpeckers and a couple of sapsuckers were having the feast of their lives on the ants and grubs that had been routed out of their homes by our work. They were so busy and hungry that they let me approach to within a few yards of them without flying away. As I remember it, the chickadees used to be the first to a feast of this kind, but there was none in sight. As a matter of fact, I have not seen a chickadee this year, though they are not migrating birds. I am afraid that the woods are no longer dense enough for these busy, impudent little fellows. Other birds are quite plentiful, however. Every dead limb that can serve as a sounding-board now has its bachelor or widower woodpecker or highholder rattling out his love call until you would think that a sky-scraper was in course of erection in the woodlot, with the pneumatic riveters hard at work. At least two flocks of quail have wintered safely on this farm, and they must be mating now, for every morning they can be heard whistling "Bob White" from every point of the compass. Unless we have a wet summer, the place should be overrun with them next fall. The blue jays are not squawking as much as they were during the winter, so it is probable that they are also nesting, but the blackbirds and crows are still in flocks. A couple of weeks ago the nest of a horned lark with four eggs in it was found in the snow, but it was apparently deserted owing to the unusually cold weather.

This morning the hawks were circling over the old nest, and I am afraid that I shall once more have the unpleasant task of breaking up their housekeeping. For three years I have shot up their nest during the breeding season, but still they will not desert the old homestead. They must have been there for years, for the nest is now a huge pile of sticks about four feet in diameter, in the top of the tallest and most slippery beech tree within miles. As the owner does not live on the farm and has no young chickens to be destroyed, he does not want a valuable tree cut down, and the nest is so high that no one thinks of climbing to it and pulling it down.

APRIL

April 2.--Spring seems to be approaching this year in much the same way as the snail in the old school problem climbed to the top of the pole. He used to climb up two inches in the daytime and slip back one at night. Every approach of spring is followed by an immediate relapse, and on several occasions it seemed to advance only one inch in the daytime and then to slip back six inches at night. But it is certainly coming. Every time the sap begins running again it runs a little faster, and last Sunday it gushed out at a rate that was both wasteful and wicked. I have just heard of one good man who was so impressed by the waste that he sat up until twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and immediately after the clock struck he went out to the sugar-bush and gathered the sap by the light of a lantern. I can't help wondering if he was not really breaking the Sabbath in knowing anything about the condition of his sap-buckets, and especially in having his mind on the subject during the hours of waiting. It is a delicate point, and one on which we should have an authoritative ruling. But spring is really coming, and the imagination kindles at the thought. It is really no wonder that every one with a touch of poetry "rages on swift iambics" in the spring. After the season of dreariness and death the hosts of light and life come back to reconquer the earth. Marshalled and led by their great general, the sun, the birds come back with the south winds. The flowers, and every green herb, rouse and push through the warm soil; the leaves expand in the genial glow, and presently the world is all alive again. In a short time we get accustomed to the reign of life, and poetry languishes during the heat of summer. But while the change is taking place the soul of man expands, and his thoughts begin to pulse in accord with the great rhythms of the universe. In such a state of exaltation poetry becomes as natural as breathing.

Of course the birds are back, and it is impossible to disregard them entirely. The boys shout the news to me whenever they see a returned traveller--bluebirds, killdeers, robins, meadow-larks: in short, "all the migrant hosts of June." But they need no announcer. Their songs and cries make their presence known. The song-sparrows are singing with a persistence that suggests that they have selected their summer homes and are satisfied. A few minutes ago a horned lark rested for a moment on a fence post and warbled in a hurried, excited way that suggested a brief respite from the cares of housekeeping. As their nests are frequently found when there is snow on the ground, his mate is probably brooding somewhere in the neighbourhood. Lucky birds! They have no "ne temere" decree to bother them, and the way they go over line fences shows that they have no idea of property rights. But, as I said, the birds are not the dominating attraction of the day. My mind constantly goes back to the sun and its boundless activity. If I were a painter I should want to paint the sunshine when it seems to be so alive as it is this morning. It is brushing away the snow, making the elm buds misty, sending countless rivulets whispering and lisping through the grass, and filling every nook and cranny with its flood of life. The sunshine we are having seems to be piled on the earth as high as the sun itself. The air is steeped in it, and wherever we turn we can see its "banners yellow, glorious, golden." Everything we look at reflects back the sunshine. The very songs of the birds seem to come to us freighted with sunshine--sunshine everywhere and over everything. Even the houses and barns across the fields look as if they had been awakened by it, and are cheery and cosy and hospitable. It is certainly a great day.