AMATEUR SUGAR MAKER.

By Noelperrin (Professor of English). Illustratedby Robert MacLean. Hanover: UniversityPress of New England in cooperation with Vermont Life Magazine. 1972. 104 pp.$4.50.

Spring arrived in Hanover with the publication of Noel Perrin's choice little volume on maple sugaring. The pen and ink drawings on the jacket conjure up all that is most appealing about New England in March and tempt the reader to discover what an Amateur Sugar Maker is all about.

Those looking for a primer on sugar making will not be disappointed though they will have to wait some 30 pages while the author describes the building of his sugar house. This is a fascinating introduction written by Perrin the scholar and admirer of Henry David Thoreau.

Here he tells how, like Thoreau, he set about to do something he wanted to do with his own hands, simply and frugally. He wanted to do some maple Sugaring on his Vermont land and to build the sugar house himself. The method and cost of constructing the sugar house compared with that of Thoreau's cabin became an exercise in frugality and hard work of considerable interest to the author and of certain astonishment to the modern-day builder. If the reader is not already among those given to the occasional re-reading of Walden, I suspect he will turn to Thoreau's book next and then follow an equally irresistible impulse to tap a few sugar maples.

For after elaborating on the building of the sugar house, the author fills the remaining pages with a delightful chronicle of finding the equipment and obtaining the know-how to reach that moment when the syrup "aprons" off the scoop and yields 16 gallons of "Grade A Fancy."

In addition to acquainting the reader with the sugaring process, Mr. Perrin intersperses much of the history of sugar making in the text, along with anecdotes and regional stories made more appealing by the use of actual names and places.

The word amateur belies the author's status as an old-time sugar maker. For that he is by virtue of his own definition: "I like an edge of hard labor to my life." Generations of New Englanders are reflected in the determination of a man who sets out to clear a piece of land, build a sugar house, and carry on the strenuous contest with nature that begins the day the sugar bush is tapped. Only someone with zest for that sort of edge begins this rugged ritual of Spring. Noel Perrin did not wish just to play games.

Mrs. Wellington is a Smith alumna whosefamily farm is in Pike, N. H. With the aidand counsel of family and neighbors, she hasrestored the farm's original sugar house withlumber and equipment gleaned from thecountryside.