MARCH. THE weather still continued cold, with high winds and hard frosts; but the Milton family were able to give some variety to their out-ofdoor exercise. In the middle of the day, the sun was so powerful, that the weather gained considerable warmth, and they found rides on horseback were very healthful and agreeable. The snows melted on the hills, and swelled the small streams, which came rushing down with great force, forming splendid waterfalls as they found their way over the rocks, and hastened down to fill up the rivers. The streams were all much increased, and many bridges and dams were carried away. Though they could not but regret the loss and damage which some of their neighbors suffered on these occasions, the spectacle of these torrents was often very magnificent and imposing. On one occasion, the ice in the river broke up, and came down with such force as to undermine some parts of a bridge, which crossed a river near the house of Mr. Milton. For several hours, the inhabitants of the town were assembled in great numbers, to watch it; and at last it came, the mighty torrent, bearing along immense blocks of ice, which it forced against the bridge, and with a great crash it yielded, and the large masses of the timber which composed it were hurried down the stream. In the afternoon, many anecdotes were told of these freshets, as they are called, and it was mentioned that in some places the bridges had been carried away several times, before a method of building could be discovered sufficiently strong to resist these spring torrents. - "Father," said Frank, "I believe this is the month when maple sugar is made; can you tell us any thing about it?" FATHER. "The maple sugar is made from a tree, called acer saccharinum, or sugar maple. It grows in many parts of the United States, though not near the seashore. A tree of common size will yield from twenty to thirty gallons of sap in a season. This sap is collected by boring holes in the trees, and fastening to them small troughs, which convey it into vessels made to receive it. It is then put into large kettles, and boiled down, until it forms itself into grains. This is the raw sugar. There are various ways of purifying and bleaching it." SOPHIA. "In Mr. Cooper's story of the Pioneers is an amusing description of a visit to a sugar bush, as he calls it, of which I will read some parts, if you please." All the party expressed a desire to hear her extracts, and she very good-humoredly tripped off to the library, to find the book. She thought the whole chapter would not interest those unacquainted with the story; she therefore only read such parts as she thought most to the point. 6 "It was at the close of the month of March that the sheriff succeeded in persuading his cousin and her young friend to accompany him in a ride; and, cousin Bess,' said he, we will stop and see the sugar bush of Billy Kirby.' They rode until they reached an open wood on the summit of the mountain, where the hemlocks and pines totally disappeared, and a grove of sugar maples covered the earth with their tall straight trunks and spreading branches, in stately pride. The underwood had been entirely removed from this grove, or bush, as, in conjunction with the simple arrangements for boiling, it was called, and a wide space of many acres was cleared, which might be likened to the dome of a mighty temple, to which the maples, with their stems, formed the columns, their tops composing the capitals, and the heavens the arch. A deep and careless incision had been made into each tree, near the root, into which little spouts, formed of the bark of the alder or the sumach were fastened; and a trough, roughly dug out of the linden or bass-wood, was lying at the root of each tree, to catch the sap that flowed from this extremely wasteful and inartificial arrangement. "The party paused a moment, on gaining the flat, to breathe their horses, and as the scene was entirely new to several of their number, to view the manner of collecting the fluid. A fine, powerful voice aroused them from their momentary silence, as it rung under the branches of the trees, singing the following words of that inimitable doggerel, whose verses, if extended, would reach from the waters of the Connecticut to the shores of Ontario. The tune was, of course, Yankee Doodle. "The Eastern States be full of men, Then flow away, my sweety sap, The maple tree's a precious one And when your stiff day's work is done, 'Then flow away, &c. 'And what's a man without his glass, 'Then flow away, my sweety sap, Nor catch a woodman's hasty nap, For fear "The Frenchman approached the place where Kirby had deposited his cakes of sugar, under the cover of a bark roof, and commenced the examination of the article with the eye of one who well understood its value. Marmaduke had dismounted, and was viewing the works and trees very closely, and not without frequent expressions of dissatisfaction at the |