 | CHAPTER XLVI. Forest life |  |
46. CHAPTER XLVI.
Come summer, come winter, 'tis a' ane to me!
A feast of quilts which was held in the neighborhood
about this time afforded a convenient
opportunity to convince Lewis Arden that he was
not so happy as he thought himself. All the young
people were to be there, and Miss Duncan told
Candace that she never would forgive her if she
did not show some “spunk.” By way of security,
she administered a double dose of flattery, and
expended besides all her gayest taste in decorating
the simple girl with finery like her own. She
tortured the wilful curls into as fashionable a shape
as possible; laced to thread-paper size the graceful
and well-proportioned waist; and when she had
made Candace look as unlike her own sweet natural
self as possible, she hung round her neck that very
necklace of blue beads which made her own sallow
complexion look so muddy, but which set off the
pure white and red of the young beauty to a dazzling
splendor, and matched the color of her eyes
better than any thing but living sapphires could
have done.
“Now you look something like!” exclaimed
“Them beads makes your neck look as white as a
curd! I've a great mind to make you a present
of 'em! What'll you give me if I do?”
Candace had nothing, and therefore could make
no offer for the present, but Miss Duncan declared
that should make no difference.
“You will find something, I dare say,” said she
with an air of magnanimity, “or may be your
mother will be a mind to give me one o' them nice
cheeses of hers—”
Candace was overpowered by such generosity,
and she could not help blushing with pleasure as
she gave a glance at her altered appearance, a bit
at a time, in a triangular fragment of looking-glass
which had been the only voucher for her beauty
before Miss Duncan came.
“You do look like a picter, and no mistake!”
exclaimed that lady, who was contemplating her
work with much self-gratulation; “I hope you'll
treat that Arden boy with some sperrit! I should
let him know I wasn't too cheap for his betters!
A fellow that hasn't got a cent to be so uppish!”
Strange! how soon this principle of estimation
finds its way to the woods!
It never entered the wise head of our little Candace
to question the truth of Miss Duncan's report;
so there was a fine show of contempt at the quilting.
Lewis Arden's attentions were rejected in
every way, and although it was hard to make him
as Miss Duncan said, to “get through his hair.” He
said nothing however, but in spite of his efforts at
self-command, his brow grew redder and redder, till
the veins stood out like whip-cord, and his eyes
looked as if they would be consumed in their own
smothered fire. He took care to retort scorn for scorn
with ample interest, whispered to the prettiest girls
round the quilt, and at the romping scene of the
shaking and folding, and during the dance which
followed, any one who did not know Lewis Arden
would have set him down as the gayest of the gay.
Yet when the time for parting arrived, old habits
resumed something of their wonted power. In the
bustle of seeking bonnets and shawls he found a
moment to speak to Candace out of hearing of
Miss Duncan.
“Candace!” he whispered, “are you in earnest!”
We were not there, and nobody ever told us—
but we can answer for it that the poor little heart
of Candace, angry as she tried to be, thrilled to its
core at these few words. But womanly pride came
to her rescue, and she gave a brief reply in the
newly-adopted tone of disregard.
“Then I am not to go home with you to-night?”
persisted Lewis, half choked with emotion.
“No, I thank you,” said Candace, running away
to hide the tears that would gush in spite of her,
and hurrying to join her new friend, who was
looking for her.
It will be seen that our little country-girl was
an apt scholar; but such lore is soon learned. She
slept but little that night, however; and she would
have slept still less if she had known that Lewis
roamed till daylight through the leafless woods, in
a state of mind little short of madness. He was a
young man of strong feelings, and attached to
Candace with a passionate energy of which her
gentler nature could form but faint conception.
His character had been developed by difficulty and
hardship to a manly tone, which befits the back-woodsman
well; but the sense of grinding poverty
rendered his feelings only the more keenly watchful
against the very shadow of contempt.
Matters between Lewis and Candace having
come thus to an open rupture, every day served to
widen the breach; and the usual course of irritation
and misconstruction by which such people ingeniously
help on their own misery rendered it very
unlikely that the broken cords would ever be
reunited. But turn we aside now, in order to say
something of the lawsuit, which had been sufficient
to imbitter the feelings of the two families,
even without the malicious aid of Miss Duncan.
The main point in dispute was a certain sugar-bush,
the title to which had become doubtful by
means of some legal quiddities of which I can give
no account. Mr. Arden had been for several years
in quiet possession, and he looked upon the attempt
of William Beamer, a rich bachelor, (“rich” means
ague for six months or a year without coming to
the end of his means,)—he looked upon such an
attempt to prove property, as an act of oppression;
not precisely one of those acts which prove the
rich to be the natural enemies of the poor,—for
William Beamer, not being an educated man, did
not come quite within the category,—but as an
unneighborly thing, against a poor man with a
large family;—in short—an excuse for that
ruinous remedy, an angry lawsuit.
Perhaps my reader may require enlightening as
to how and why men should fight and hate each
other for years, and spend a great deal of money,
in order to establish property in a bush.
A sugar-bush, to some ears doubtless, brings no
idea more important than that of the Christmas tree
on whose stiff branches are hung the treasures of
Santa Claus;—great coils of candy and horns of
sugar-plums and kisses; not to mention oranges,
raisins, figs, and many a pretty ticketed gift besides.
That would do for a city meaning of the term.
But where little boys and girls are obliged to make
tamarack-gum serve instead of sugar-candy, a sugar-bush
means from two hundred to a thousand maple-trees,
grouped here and there within the circuit of
a mile or so; their luxuriant crowns making a cool
twilight under the hottest summer sun, and their
straight and polished shafts giving, in the glittering
winter moonlight, no faint idea of those remaining
of grace and elegance to the mind of the
classic traveller. We say little about their beauty,
although it is probable that even here, that is not
without a degree of its own benign influence; but
happy he whose far-reaching “eighties” enclose a
sugar-bush!
A thousand miles from the ocean, even brown
Havanas cost money; and I believe it may be
asserted that all the world like sugar. A late
traveller tells us that his wild kervash—a being to
whom one might have supposed a Cossack girdle
of raw pork would have been the more acceptable
dainty—would bury his fingers in a plate of sugar,
and devour it by the handful; and we have ourselves
known a grave philosopher from whom his
lady declared she should be obliged to lock up her
sugar-barrel. In these Western shades, to which
sugars from abroad come burdened with many a
profit, the taste is quite as conspicuous; and the
primitive resources of wild honey and maple sugar
are much sought after. Honey, though very valuable,
is not so universally adapted to the taste, and
therefore takes only the second place. The sap of
the soft-maple is used for a variety of household
purposes besides making sugar, so that what is
called the sugar season—somewhere about the
month of March—is looked upon as a time of
domestic hilarity; and if the season prove favorable,
no pains are spared to secure all its advantages.
business of sugar-making, important as it is. It is
an affair of expedients and special provision, year
after year;—managed just in that disadvantageous
jack-of-all-trades sort of way with many other operations
in a thinly-peopled region, where every
body engages in every thing.
The Indians used almost to monopolize the trade
in maple sugar. The mococks, or bark panniers in
which they brought the sugar to market, were
pretty objects at least, and the sugar itself brought
them something towards their wretched living.
The manufacture just suited them;—a week's
labor to a month's rest is quite enough for an Indian.
But rumors got afloat that the red men
boiled their food—musk-rats for instance—in the
kettle of sap, during the sugar-making process;
and some said too that they used their blankets for
strainers—all which contributed to bring the sugar
into bad odor—(an unavoidable pun, reader!)—so
there was one means of whisky-buying the less for
the poor wretches, before they left us.
Their first successor in the woods, the pioneer,
without sympathy for them personally, seems yet
to have imbibed, perhaps from the forest air, somewhat
of their love of roving, their desire of freedom
from restraint, their dislike of continuous labor, and
their preference for such as promises a speedy return,
however small. Going into the sugar-bush
has something of the excitement which the forester
can, with all his work. A dash of uncertainty—
a chance of failure—relieves the tedium of mere
labor. An enterprise in the success of which luck
is to have its share, is always undertaken with
more zest, as the hunter would lose half the pleasure
of the chase if he were sure of bagging the
game.
But what can luck have to do with sugar-making?
The trees cannot run away—the axe will cut—
the gouge will pierce—the troughs will hold—
fire will burn—sap will boil. True; but the sun
is fitful and will not always shine just enough and
not too much, nor the frost come always at night
and stay away by day. It may be too warm to
freeze, or too cold to thaw. It is this regular
alternation that brings delight to the sugar-boiler;
for it is only in the freezing process that the sap is
accumulated, and in the thawing that it is given
out. Nor is this all for which we look to luck.
The sap is sometimes not so nectareous as it should
be, and so yields less than its forty-eighth of the
delicious sweet which the man of kettles claims as
his due; and for an inferior yield luck gets always
the blame.
But when he “lots” of a good season, he reaps
a rich reward for his labor. The breaking up of
winter, when the frozen earth and frozen trees
begin to feel the sun's genial influence, is the propitious
period. Winters of abundant snow are
of temperature usually attend its departure. In this
case, the sugar-maker sets forth with lively hopes,
and works indefatigably in preparing his troughs,
in which labor his only aid is his faithful axe,
with which he will scoop out two dozen a day.
This done, he selects the fairest trees—hacks them
after a peculiar fashion, (opinions conflict on this important
point,) and then places a bark conductor, or
something better if he can get it, so that no drop
of the precious liquid may escape the rough-cut
troughs arranged below. A huge “lug-pole,” supported
on crotches, receives the kettles; which in
size and number are the best which can be found,
and these are usually each slung by the aid of an
ox-chain. With such primitive contrivances many
thousands of pounds of maple sugar are made every
year. No expensive apparatus, no attempt at refining—if
we except a great tub of lime-water in
which to rinse every trough and bucket frequently
during the whole process of collecting the sap—
and this is cared for only by the careful—a small
minority.
But I am before my story a little. Sugar-making
is undertaken, as before hinted, by every body indiscriminately,
who can command a “bush,” and
this includes many whose disposable means could
not compass the purchase of one great caldron,
much less of half a dozen. This occasions a
racing and chasing after kettles;—scouring the
indispensable articles. I have known them sought
at a distance of twenty miles, with a promise of
the payment of one half the value of the kettles, in
sugar. With a favorite object ahead, we are apt
to promise largely, and with the best intentions
too; and what an object is it to get plenty of sugar
for wife and children, without paying the grocer,
—nay, with something to exchange with him for
tea for the good woman! If the season be favorable,
and the sap run well, and the bush be not too
far off, the aid of the wife is not unfrequently called
in, to tend fires and do the lighter part of the work.
I have seen the pony saddled, and wife and baby
mounted on it, and led into the woods, looking
like the picture of Joseph and Mary going down
into Egypt. What a primitive, pastoral air runs
through all the arrangements of this backwoods
life! It startles one sometimes to see things that
bring back the oldest scenes on record.
The process called “sugaring-off”—rather an
abstruse affair—is, I believe, not considered likely
to be quite perfect without the aid of female hands,
and the making of a sort of candy, pulled from
hand to hand scientifically, is to be done by the
young folks, of course. This is a frolic, or the
excuse for one; and the candy is beautiful and
most delicious. It is a part which I confess a
weakness for myself; and it is not without sufficient
precedent; for many a gay demoiselle has
reader should imagine I have got fast among the
sugar-kettles, like a fly in a honey-pot, return we
to our lambs—lovers, I mean; only premising that
I expect thanks for this digression upon sugar-making,
as I take it for granted my reader is among
those who are about emigrating to these fruitful
wilds.
| CHAPTER XLVI. Forest life | |