't feel so bad about the loss of it,
as I do to think what awful liars people can be, declaring on the label
that 'deed and double, 'pon their word and honor, it is pure, genuine,
unadulterated maple syrup, when they know just as well as they know
anything that it is only store-sugar boiled up with maple chips.

Along about the same time, the boys come home with a ring of mud around
their mouths, and exhaling spicy breaths like those which blow o'er
Ceylon's isle in the hymn-book. They bear a bundle of roots, whose
thick, pink hide mother whittles off with the butcher-knife and sets
to steep. Put away the store tea and coffee. To-night as we drink the
reddish aromatic brew we return, not only to our own young days, but
to the young days of the nation when our folks moved to the West in a
covered wagon; when grandpap, only a little boy then, about as big as
Charley there, got down the rifle and killed the bear that had climbed
into the hog-pen; when they found old Cherry out in the timber with her
calf between her legs, and two wolves lying where she had horned them
to death--we return to-night to the high, heroic days of old, when our
forefathers conquered the wilderness and our foremothers reared the
families that peopled it. This cup of sassafras to-night in their loving
memory! Earth, rest easy on their moldering bones!

Some there be that still take stock in the groundhog. I don't believe
he knows anything about it. And I believe that any animal that had
the sense that he is reputed to have would not have remained a mere
ground-hog all these years. At least not in this country. Anyhow, it's
a long ways ahead, six weeks is, especially at the time when you do wish
so fervently that it would come spring. We keep on shoveling coal in the
furnace, and carrying out ashes, and longing and crying: "Oh, for pity's
sakes! When is this going to stop?" And then, one morning, we awaken
with a start Wha--what? Sh! Keep still, can't you? There is a more
canorous and horn-like quality to the crowing of Gildersleeve's rooster,
and his hens chant cheerily as they kick the litter about. But it wasn't
these cheerful sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that?
Hear it? Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at
a trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow, blessed
bird! It won't be long now; it won't be long.

The snow fort in the back-yard still sulks there black and dirty. "I'll
go whe