The Boyhood of an Inventor - Early Television Foundation

f u 1
not to
drop the coals
off the lid,
coals put there
to make the
tasty brown
top crust.
Then there
was the delimaple
cious
syrup and
maple sugar.
But delicious
as it was, the
most fun was
Gathering maple-sap for sugar and syrup
Grandfather would go
in the gathering of the sap.
about through the woods boring holes with an augur
in the trunk of the beautiful maple trees, drive therein
a spile made of an elderberry stalk, and set a gourd or
a crock to catch the dripping sap, returning next day
with bobsled and sapyoke to gather the sweet fluid
and boil it down to the right consistency.
It is
unimportant whether the grandfather was a
gifted handyman and an originator, or only a copyist,
or perhaps something of both, but among the many
things the grandfather made the boy found much
to add to his mental store, and of value in after
years, as he studied the weighted-log-lever press
with which the grand
mother made cheeses ;
the sturdy cradle in
which, with a foot on
the rocker, she put
the babies to sleep
while knitting socks,
and the spinning
wheel, and the loom
used in the making
of the family raiment,
ill an( l l'h