r, and
especially after dinner; which is to be sent up with the rest into the
sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o'clock, and in the
afternoon help 'sugar off.' See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm
it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How
like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the
crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight.
Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by
going across lots. Here we go, with our heels crunching the glittering
pavement, leaving scarcely a vestige of our tread, the frost of last night
has so effectually congealed it. Yonder across this valley which the hills
prevent our seeing from the house, is the sugar-bush, sloping to the
south. The canal we first crossed leads to the old mills down to the right
yonder, where you see that grove of black-cherry trees, and the little
house on the knoll. The mist that you see to the left, rises from the
mill-dam, the monotonous hum of whose falling waters you have heard for
some time. This is Furnace Creek, whose swift current harbors the most
beautiful trout. That crow yonder on the dry hemlock is calling to his
mate, and the speckled wood-pecker is tapping away at that old beech, that
the nice insects within its decayed interior may come out to make him a
breakfast. Hark! do you not hear the drum of that partridge? He is up
there in that thicket of young beeches and hemlocks, on the other side of
the road. As you hear the slow, measured drum which he gives at first, and
which he hastens into a whirr like distant thunder, does not 'The old
Man's Counsel' come fresh to your memory, and almost ringing in your ear?
Ah! this is the glory of true poetry, that it clothes the commonest things
with a new interest, and forever after they become objects of love, at
least of meditation. Who that has read the same author's 'Lines to a
Waterfowl,' does not gaze with other than a sportsman's pleasure upon even
a wild duck, if it flies past him after sunset. But there goes a flock of
pigeons, and here over our heads; one! two! three! more than a hundred in
each! What a rushing sound their wings make! They fly too high for us just
now: but wait till we get on the cleared hill yonder to the right of the
sugar-bush, and we shall have rare sport as they emerge from the trees and
skim along the edge of the 'clearing.'

Here we are in the suga