He tells the other boys afterward that he heard something in the night
that sounded very much like a bear. The hired man says that he was very
much scared by the hooting of an owl.
The great occasions for the boy, though, are the times of "sugaring
off." Sometimes this used to be done in the evening, and it was made the
excuse for a frolic in the camp.
The neighbors were invited; sometimes even the pretty girls from the
village, who filled all the woods with their sweet voices and merry
laughter, were there, too.
The tree branches all show distinctly in the light of the fire, which
lights up the bough shanty, the hogsheads, the buckets on the trees, and
the group about the boiling kettles, until the scene is like something
taken out of a fairy play.
At these sugar parties every one was expected to eat as much sugar as
possible; and those who are practiced in it can eat a great deal.
It is a peculiar fact about eating warm maple sugar, that though you
may eat so much of it one day as to be sick, you will want it the next
day more than ever.
At the "sugaring off" they used to pour the hot sugar upon the snow,
where it congealed into a sort of wax, which I suppose is the most
delicious substance that was ever invented.
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