WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 133 



desire to labour, for the more they could cut the larger 

 the sum they would receive ; and what is man's heart 

 and brain to money ? So hard, you see, is the pressure 

 of human life that these miserables would have prayed 

 on their knees for permission to tear their arms from 

 the socket, and to scorch and shrivel themselves to 

 charred human brands in the furnace of the sun. 



Does it not seem bitter that it should be so ? Here 

 was the wheat, the beauty of which I strive in vain to 

 tell you, in the midst of the flowery summer, scourging 

 them with the knot of necessity ; that which should give 

 life pulling the life out of them, rendering their exist- 

 ence below that of the cattle, so far as the pleasure of 

 living goes. Without doubt many a low mound in the 

 churchyard — once visible, now level — was the sooner 

 raised over the nameless dead because of that terrible 

 strain in the few weeks of the gold fever. This is 

 human life, real human life — no rest, no calm enjoyment 

 of the scene, no generous gift of food and wine lavishly 

 offered by the gods — the hard fist of necessity for ever 

 battering man to a shapeless and hopeless fall. 



The whole village lived in the field ; a corn-land 

 village is always the most populous, and every rood of 

 land thereabouts, in a sense, maintains its man. The 

 reaping, and the binding up and stacking of the sheaves, 

 and the carting and building of the ricks, and the glean- 

 ing, there was something to do for every one, from the 

 1 olde, olde, very olde man,' the Thomas Parr of the 

 hamlet, down to the very youngest child whose little 

 eye could see, and whose little hand could hold a stalk 

 of wheat. The gleaners had a way of binding up the 

 collected wheatstalks together so that a very large 

 quantity was held tightly in a very small compass. 

 The gleaner's sheaf looked like the knot of a girl's hair 



