.
In the March or April twilight, or maybe after dark, we would carry
those heavy pails of syrup down to the house, where the liquid was
strained while still hot. The reduction of it to sugar was done upon the
kitchen stove, from three hundred to five hundred pounds being about the
average annual yield.

The bright warm days at the boiling-place I love best to remember; the
robins running about over the bare ground or caroling from the treetops,
the nuthatches calling, the crows walking about the brown fields, the
bluebirds flitting here and there, the cows lowing or restless in the
barnyard.

When I think of the storied lands across the Atlantic,--England, France,
Germany, Italy, so rich in historical associations, steeped in legend
and poetry, the very look of the fields redolent of the past,--and then
turn to my own native hills, how poor and barren they seem!--not one
touch anywhere of that which makes the charm of the Old World--no
architecture, no great names; in fact, no past. They look naked and
prosy, yet how I love them and cling to them! They are written over with
the lives of the first settlers that cleared the fields and built the
stone walls--simple, common-place lives, worthy and interesting, but
without the appeal of heroism or adventure.

The land here is old, geologically, dating back to the Devonian Age, the
soil in many places of decomposed old red sandstone; but it is new in
human history, having been settled only about one hundred and fifty
years.

Time has worn down the hills and mountains so that all the outlines
of the country are gentle and flowing. The valleys are long, open, and
wide; the hills broad and smooth, no angles or abruptness, or sharp
contrasts anywhere. Hence it is not what is called a picturesque
land--full of bits of scenery that make the artist's fingers itch. The
landscape has great repose and gentleness, so far as long, sweeping
lines and broad, smooth slopes can give this impression. It is a
land which has never suffered violence at the hands of the interior
terrestrial forces; nothing is broken or twisted or contorted or thrust
out or up abruptly. The strata are all horizontal, and the steepest
mountain-slopes clothed with soil that nourishes large forest growths.

I stayed at home, working on the farm in summer and going to school in
winter, till I was seventeen. From the time I was fourteen I had had
a desire to go away to school. I had a craving for knowledge w