272 AUGUST. 



and to participate in the happiness of the 

 simple and the lowly, now is the time to stroll 

 abroad. They will find beauty and enjoyment 

 spread abundantly before them. They will 

 find the mowers sweeping down the crops of 

 pale barley, every spiked ear of which, so 

 lately looking up bravely at the sun, is now 

 bent downward in a modest and graceful curve, 

 as if abashed at his ardent and incessant gaze. 

 They will find them cutting down the rustling 

 oats, each followed by an attendant rustic who 

 gathers the swath into sheaves from the tender 

 green of the young clover, which, commonly 

 sown with oats to constitute the future crop, is 

 now showing itself luxuriantly. But it is in 

 the wheat-field that all the jollity and gladness, 

 and picturesqueness of harvest is concentrated. 

 Wheat is more particularly the food of man. 

 Barley affords him a wholesome but much 

 abused potation; the oat is welcome to the 

 homely board of the hardy mountaineers, but 

 wheat is especially, and every where the ce staff 

 of life." To reap and gather it in, every crea- 

 ture of the hamlet is assembled. The farmer is 

 in the field, like a rural king amid his people 



