THE NATURAL MAN 259 



tory. Such faiths, deep-rooted in a nation's heart, do 

 not die in a few years ; at most, in such a period, their 

 hold over the mind can be shaken. The generation 

 that was born and bred in the wheat faith, however it 

 shake its head over the unhappy figures of decay, 

 does not seriously believe that wheat is going ; whilst 

 how can the rising generation quite believe the story 

 when, August after August, it sees the grand crop 

 ripening to gold on weald and down, hears the talk 

 about harvest weather and prospects which its fathers 

 heard, talk as to how the wheat looks, and is the ear 

 heavy, and the crop thick this season, and will the 

 rain hold off, and is there plenty of ready labour in 

 this great corn district or that against the gathering 

 and stacking of the crop at just the right time ? 



" Ripening to gold " one says of wheat at the 

 beginning of August. Wheat, it may be objected, 

 is never the colour of gold save in sentimental talk. 

 True, it never is the colour of gold in the sense of a 

 sovereign. The gold of a coin or a jewel is utterly 

 unlike this glorious wavy expanse which I look on 

 from my window, rich straw-yellow and sun-made 

 brown, with a suggestion of pink or purple bloom on 

 the weighty ears. Wheat is not in the least gold 

 to the eye in this sense of the dressed-up, wrought 

 state of the metal, any more than the moon shines, 

 or the water runs, the colour of silver metal. These 

 colours are seen sometimes in living, growing things, 

 as on the painted wings of some butterfly or inoth, 



