re becoming turbulent to the eye;
when the sapsuckers and creeping birds were jubilant, and the honk of
the wild goose was a passing thing; when, with the upspring of the rest
of nature, the trees threw off their lethargy, and through the rugged
maples the sap began to course again. It was only a few days before
Easter that my friend--his name was Hayes, "Jack" Hayes, we called him,
though his name, of course, was John--had an inspiration.

Jack knew that so far as his own domain was concerned the time had
arrived for the making of maple sugar, and there was promise in the
making there, for the wilderness was still virgin. He decided that he
would have a regular "sugar-camp" in the midst of his "sugar-bush," and
that there should be much making of maple syrup and sugar, with all the
attendant festivities common formerly to areas farther south--and here
comes an explanation.

Not many months before, this friend of mine had done what men had done
often--that is, he fell in love, and with great violence. He fell in
love with a stately young woman from St. Louis, a Miss Lennox, who was
visiting in Chicago; a girl from the city where what is known as
"society" is old and generally clean; where the water which is drunk
leaves a clayey substance all round the glass when you partake of it,
and which is about the best water in the world; where the colonels who
drink whisky are such expert judges of the quality of what they consume
that they live far longer than do steady drinkers in other regions;
where the word of the business man is good, and where the women are
fair to look upon. To a sugar-making Jack had decided to invite this
young woman, with a party made up from both cities.

The party as composed was an admirable one of a dozen people, men and
women who could endure a wholesome though somewhat rugged change, and of
varying fancies and ages. There were as many men as women, but four were
oldsters and married people, and of these two were a rector and his
wife. It was an eminently proper but cheerful group, and the rector was
the greatest boy of all. We tried to teach him how to shoot white
rabbits, but abandoned the task finally, out of awful apprehension for
ourselves. Had the reverend gentleman's weapon been a bell-mouth, some
of us would assuredly have been slain. We were having a jolly time, our
host furnishing, possibly, the one exception.

Of the wooing of Hayes it cannot be said that it had prospered
altogethe