258 SUMMER 



and level heads, such as you see when the German govern- 

 ment drills the forests into economic neatness. The men 

 used the golden time to the utmost. You heard the hum of 

 the machines when the silver moon was lighting the velvet 

 colours of the west. In a trice the fields 

 were levelled. The hedges appeared 

 again as ridges, and before many days, 

 so dry were the sheaves, the stackyard 

 was as full as the fields were empty. The 

 bargain was fulfilled, the money paid, and 

 the farmer becoming master again was 

 paying the ploughman a daily wage for 

 turning the stubble to tilth. 



There are many harvests : the hay 

 harvest, the clover harvest, the root har- 

 vest, the potato harvest, the fruit harvest, 

 the seed harvest. The corn harvest itself 

 is of many sorts. But there is one 

 harvest of harvests. The crown of the 

 year in England is the wheat harvest. 

 When we speak of corn in England we 

 think not of oats or barley, however 

 wide their acreage, nor of maize, which 

 is what they mean by corn across the 

 Atlantic, but of wheat, the food of man. 

 Not once or twice have farmers to their 

 own loss continued to grow wheat long after it was profitable, 

 partly from custom, but partly too from the strong attraction 

 wheat exercises on all who have traffic with the land. It 

 makes the staple food of man, though there is no reason 

 at all why it should ; and it has made the staple food of man 

 in many countries for many years. All the literatures are 

 inlaid with bright pictures of harvest, and the joy in harvest 



SQUAREHEAD'S 

 MASTER 



