"We drive it into the tree, and the sap runs down into the trough, you see." "No, I don't see," said the minister's wife.

She was too thoroughgoing to do things by halves.

"How do you drive this into the tree, and how do you get the sap to run down it ?" "I will show you," he said, and taking with him a gouge and ax, he approached a maple still untapped.

"You first make a gash like this." So saying, with two or three blows of his ax, he made a slanting notch in the tree.

"And then you make a place for the spile this way." With the back of his ax he drove his gouge into the corner of the notch, and then fitted his spile into the incision so made.
"Ah, now I see.