WEEATFIELDS. 101 



liandkerchief tied at the corners, with a few mush- 

 rooms in it. 



The scented clover field — the white campions dot it 

 here and there — yields a rich, nectaroiis food for ten 

 thousand bees, whose hum comes together with its 

 odour on the air. But these men and women and 

 children ceaselessly toiling know no such sweets ; 

 their food is as hard as their labour. How many 

 foot-pounds, then, of human energy do these grains 

 in my hand represent? Do they not in their little 

 compass contain the potentialities, the past and the 

 future, of human life itself ? 



Another train booms across the iron bridge in the 

 hollow. In a few hours now the carriages will be 

 crowded with men hastening home from their toil in 

 the City. The narrow streak of sunshine which day 

 by day falls for a little while upon the office floor, 

 yellowed by the dingy pane, is all, perhaps, to remind 

 them of the sun and sky, of the forces of nature ; and 

 that little is unnoticed. The pressure of business is 

 so severe in these later days that in the hurry and 

 excitement it is not wonderful many should forget that 

 the world is not comprised in the court of a City 

 thoroughfare. 



Kapt and absorbed in discount and dollars, in bills 

 and merchandise, the over-strung mind deems itself 

 all — the body is forgotten, the physical body, which is 

 subject to growth and change, just as the plants and 

 the very grass of the field. But there is a subtle 

 connection between the physical man and the great 

 nature which comes pressing up so closely to the 

 metropolis. He still depends in the nineteenth 



