One of the New Voters 



nauseous to him at that moment, his taste and 

 stomach destroyed by so many gallons of this. He 

 was " pulled together, " and worked easier; the slow 

 hours went on, and it was luncheon. He could have 

 borrowed more food, but he was content instead with 

 a screw of tobacco for his pipe and his allowance of 

 beer. 



They sat in the corner of the field. There were no 

 trees for shade; they had been cut down as injurious 

 to corn, but there were a few maple bushes and thin 

 ash sprays, which seemed better than the open. The 

 bushes cast no shade at all, the sun being so nearly 

 overhead, but they formed a kind of enclosure, an 

 open-air home, for men seldom sit down if they can 

 help it on the bare and level plain; they go to the 

 bushes, to the corner, or even to some hollow. It is 

 not really any advantage; it is habit; or shall we not 

 rather say that it is nature ? Brought back as it were 

 in the open field to the primitive conditions of life, they 

 resumed the same instincts that controlled man in the 

 ages past. Ancient man sought the shelter of trees 

 and banks, of caves and hollows, and so the labourers 

 under somewhat the same conditions came to the 

 corner where the bushes grew. There they left their 

 coats and slung up their luncheon-bundles to the 

 branches ; there the children played and took charge 

 of the infants ; there the women had their hearth and 

 hung their kettle over a fire of sticks. 



II 



In August the unclouded sun, when there is no 

 wind, shines as fervently in the harvest-field as in 

 Spain. It is doubtful if the Spanish people feel the 

 heat so much as our reapers; they have their siesta; 



99 



