d man's vigorous kicks
had landed them.

It was maple sugar making time. Uncle Jacob Irons, who lived near
Masontown fifteen miles away, had a large sugar grove. A visit to Uncle
Jake's was always one continued round of pleasure. The staid uncle,
jolly Aunt Bettie, Kate and Tillie, Joe and George, John and Wilson,
were always delighted to have Alfred visit them.

It was a day that marked the passing of winter and the coming of spring,
after a night of light freezing with a white frost, the morning sun
shining all the brighter that he had been hazed so long by winter's
shadows. The earth, the trees, appeared even more brown and barren by
contrast with the splendors of the sky. Here and there a patch of snow,
left sheltered by tree or fence, seemingly endeavoring to hide from the
sunbeams that came out of the south, to pour its flood of warmth on it
until it melted and mouldered away.

It was springtime, the boyhood of the year, when half the world is rhyme
and music is the other. It was springtime in the country, far from the
city and the ways of men. The mountains in the distance, brown colored
in spots, the peaks, like winter kings with beards of snow, seemed to
say: "'Tis time for me to go northward o'er the icy rocks, northward
o'er the sea. Come the spring with all its splendor, all its buds and
all its blossoms, all its flowers and all its grasses."

It was a day that awakened feelings that seemed sacred. Have you ever
lived in the country? Have you ever visited in the country in
springtime? Have you ever asked yourself: "I wonder if the sap in the
sugar trees is stirring yet? Is the sugar water dripping?" Have you ever
worked in a sugar camp, such as there were in old Fayette County in
those days?

Nearer the south than bleak New England, the trees more full of sap, the
sap sweeter than it flows anywhere on earth. The trees in the camp
tapped, the spiles driven, the sweet water dropping; the boys and girls,
the men, yes, the women too, gathering the sap. The day is warm, the run
a big one; to save it, all must hustle the big barrels loaded on the
sleds as the horses move from one tree to another, turning over the
mosses and dried leaves, exposing the Johnny-jump-ups and violets as if
they were just peeping up through the ground at the busy scene.

The redbird is singing in the tree, his plumage all the brighter for the
winter's bleaching. The day is not long enough, the night is consumed.
The boys from all