The Open Air 



Hour after hour in the gardens and orchards they 

 worked in the full beams of the sun, gathering fruit 

 for the London market, resting at midday in the shade 

 of the elms in the corner. Even then they were in 

 the sunshine even in the shade, for the air carries it, 

 or its influence, as it carries the perfumes of flowers. 

 The heated air undulates over the field in waves which 

 are visible at a distance; near at hand they are not 

 seen, but roll in endless ripples through the shadows 

 of the trees, bringing with them the actinic power 

 of the sun. Not actinic alchemic some intangible 

 mysterious power which cannot be supplied in any 

 other form but the sun's rays. It reddens the cherry, 

 it gilds the apple, it colours the rose, it ripens the 

 wheat, it touches a woman's face with the golden- 

 brown of ripe life ripe as a plum. There is no other 

 hue so beautiful as this human sunshine tint. 



The great painters knew it Rubens, for instance; 

 perhaps he saw it on the faces of the women who 

 gathered fruit or laboured at the harvest in the Low 

 Countries centuries since. He could never have seen 

 it in a city of these northern climes, that is certain. 

 Nothing in nature that I know, except the human 

 face, ever attains this colour. Nothing like it is ever 

 seen in the sky, either at dawn or sunset; the dawn 

 is often golden, often scarlet, or purple and gold; 

 the sunset crimson, flaming bright, or delicately grey 

 and scarlet; lovely colours all of them, but not like 

 this. Nor is there any flower comparable to it, nor 

 any gem. It is purely human, and it is only found 

 on the human face which has felt the sunshine 

 continually. There must, too, I suppose, be a 

 disposition towards it, a peculiar and exceptional 

 condition of the fibres which build up the skin; for 

 of the numbers who work out of doors, very, very few 



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