10 



THE STORY OF BREAD 



time whiskers under the chin — the billy goat variety, 

 you know — were more fashionable than now, went 

 home and wrote: 'Americans eat so much wheat 

 that the spears, or blades, or whatever you call them, 

 grow out under their chins." 



Whether the remark was the result of serious 

 thought, or an effort to be funny is difficult to judge. 

 One never can tell about an Englishman. But, con- 

 sciously or otherwise, he paid Americans a lasting 

 compliment. Prosperity has for its emblem the 

 spear of wheat, be it displayed in its natural state 

 or in a decoration for the chin. 



But America — large as she is, and great as she 

 is, and much as she likes to boast — first in inven- 

 tion, first in agriculture, first in prosperity — is not 

 the only country where great train loads of wheat 

 are raised. 



The sun never sets on the harvest fields of the 

 world. A writer, with much poetry and some truth 

 in his soul, penned this: "The click of the reaper 

 is heard round the world the year round." This 

 is almost true, and therefore near enough for a 

 poet — and the rest of us. What he had in mind 

 was that every day in the year somewhere in the 

 world, to use the words of the song we used to sing, 

 they are "bringing in the sheaves." But the click of 

 the reaper is not always heard. No, not always. 

 It takes a lot of printer's ink and many strong rays 

 of light to pierce all the far-off, dark places — little 



