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 peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you may eat so much of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it, 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, without crystallizing, into a sort of wax, which I do suppose is the most delicious substance that was ever invented.  And it takes a great while to eat it.  If one should close his teeth firmly on a ball of it, he would be unable to open his mouth until it dissolved.  The sensation while it is melting is very pleasant, but one cannot converse.

The boy used to make a big lump of it and give it to the dog, who seized it with great avidity, and closed his jaws on it, as dogs will on anything.  It was funny the next moment to see the expression of perfect surprise on the dog’s face when he found that he could not open his jaws.  He shook his head; he sat down in despair; he ran round in a circle; he dashed into the woods and back again.  He did everything except climb a tree, and howl.  It would have been such a relief to him if he could have howled.  But that was the one thing he could not do.

XV

THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary, or a peddler.  Most of them used to.  There is everything in the heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy, and excite his longing for strange countries.  I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to become a roamer in literature and in the world, a poet and a wanderer.  There is something in the soil and the pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, that excites the imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of adventure.  And the prosaic life of the sweet home does not at all correspond to the boy’s dreams of the world.  In the good old days, I am told, the boys on the coast ran away and became sailors; the countryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries, and then they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports.  John used to spend hours in the top of a slender hickory-tree that a little detached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of the steep and lofty pasture behind his house.  He was sent to make war on the bushes that constantly encroached upon the pastureland; but John had no hostility to any growing thing, and a very little bushwhacking satisfied him.  When he had grubbed up a few laurels and young tree-sprouts, he was wont to retire into his favorite post of observation and meditation.