132 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



I was always fond of being out of doors, yet I used to 

 wonder how these men and women could stand it, for 

 the summer day is long, and they were there hours be- 

 fore I was up. The edge of the reap-hook had to be 

 driven by force through the stout stalks like a sword, 

 blow after blow, minute after minute, hour after hour; 

 the back stooping, and the broad sun throwing his fiery 

 rays from a full disc on the head and neck. I think 

 some of them used to put handkerchiefs doubled up in 

 their hats as pads, as in the East they wind the long roll 

 of the turban about the head, and perhaps they would 

 have done better if they had adopted the custom of the 

 South and wound a long scarf about the middle of the 

 body, for they were very liable to be struck down with 

 such internal complaints as come from great heat. Their 

 necks grew black, much like black oak in old houses. 

 Their open chests were always bare, and flat, and stark, 

 and never rising with rounded bust-like muscle as the 

 Greek statues of athletes. 



The breast-bone was burned black, and their arms, 

 tough as ash, seemed cased in leather. They grew 

 visibly thinner in the harvest-field, and shrunk togethei 

 — all flesh disappearing, and nothing but sinew an ' 

 muscle remaining. Never was such work. The wage 

 were low in those days, and it is not long ago, either — ! 

 mean the all-year-round wages ; the reaping was piece 

 work at so much per acre — like solid gold to men ant 

 women who had lived on dry bones, as it were, througl 

 the winter. So they worked and slaved, and tore at th« 

 wheat as if they were seized with a frenzy ; the heal 

 the aches, the illness, the sunstroke, always impendin; 

 in the air— the stomach hungry again before the me; 

 was over, it was nothing. No song, no laugh, no stay- 

 on from morn till night, possessed with a maddcnc( 



