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 together 

 — all flesh disappearing, and nothing but sinew and 

 muscle remaining. Never was such work. The wages 

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

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

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

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

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

 wheat as if they were seized with a frenzy ; the heat, 

 the aches, the illness, the sunstroke, always impending 

 in the air — the stomach hungry again before the meal 

 was over, it was nothing. No song, no laugh, no stay — ■ 

 on from morn till night, possessed with a maddened 



