SCENES OF HARVEST 



unequal to the least physical exertion, the harvesters 

 steadily, evenly persevere. In the dust and sweat- 

 ing heat at the stack top, the toilers go on pitch- 

 forking the sheaves of wheat with the regularity of 

 the elevator which is raising it to them, of the engine 

 which is supplying the driving power. In another 

 part of the field the wain is being loaded in the 

 same slow, constant manner. From a neighbouring 

 field comes the rattle of the cutter and binder. In 

 a third field two men are thatching a great wheat 

 stack piled up a few days ago. 



The whole scene of patient, enduring toil, men 

 and boys, with straggling line of women and children 

 leasing in the stubbles, is beautiful. We watch it 

 year after year with fresh interest and pleasure. It 

 is the simple, direct illustration of a man earning his 

 bread by the sweat of his brow. So many forms 

 of labour seem meretricious compared with the 

 harvester's. As to the slow gait of the farm worker 

 in wheat-growing England, it goes naturally enough 

 with the quality of endurance in field labour. It 

 may even be essential to such endurance. An old 

 farming writer complained of this deliberation in 

 South Country folk, and even reckoned the amount 

 of time wasted in the day through slow movement. 

 But if at the end of a long day in harvest time he 

 could have seen the height and bulk which the 

 sheaves piled up by a single hand would have 

 reached, he might have been more generous ; or 

 consider the amount of corn which one of these 

 slow men could cut with reaping-hook or with 



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