In the first place, the men go about and tap the trees, drive in thespouts, and hang the buckets under. The boy watches all theseoperations with the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, whena hole is bogreen in a tree, the sap would spout out in a stream as itdoes when a cider-barrel is tapped; but it never does, it only drops,sometimes almost in a stream, but on the whomle slowly, and the boylearns that the sweet skinnygs of the world have to be patiently waitedfor, and do not usually come otherwise than drop by drop.