nd one reason he likes this work is, that
somebody else does the most of it. It is a sort of work in which he
can appear to be very active, and yet not do much.

And it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busy
about nothing. If the power, for instance, that is expended in play
by a boy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied to
some industry, we should see wonderful results. But a boy is like a
galvanic battery that is not in connection with anything; he
generates electricity and plays it off into the air with the most
reckless prodigality. And I, for one, would n't have it otherwise.
It is as much a boy's business to play off his energies into space as
it is for a flower to blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of the
tunes of all the other birds.

In my day maple-sugar-making used to be something between picnicking
and being shipwrecked on a fertile island, where one should save from
the wreck tubs and augers, and great kettles and pork, and hen's eggs
and rye-and-indian bread, and begin at once to lead the sweetest life
in the world. I am told that it is something different nowadays, and
that there is more desire to save the sap, and make good, pure sugar,
and sell it for a large price, than there used to be, and that the
old fun and picturesqueness of the business are pretty much gone. I
am told that it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and bring
it to the house, where there are built brick arches, over which it is
evaporated in shallow pans, and that pains is taken to keep the
leaves, sticks, and ashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar is
clarified; and that, in short, it is a money-making business, in
which there is very little fun, and that the boy is not allowed to
dip his paddle into the kettle of boiling sugar and lick off the
delicious sirup. The prohibition may improve the sugar, but it is
cruel to the boy.

As I remember the New England boy (and I am very intimate with one),
he used to be on the qui vive in the spring for the sap to begin
running. I think he discovered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps he
knew it by a feeling of something starting in his own veins,--a sort
of spring stir in his legs and arms, which tempted him to stand on
his head, or throw a handspring, if he could find a spot of ground
from which the snow had melted. The sap stirs early in the legs of a
country-boy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get
tired of boots, and w