ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS. 101 



his drab unpolished boots, in the hue of the wheat 

 or the white convolvulus ; they were nothing to him. 



Why should they be ? His life was work without 

 skill or thought, the work of the horse, of the crane 

 that lifts stones and timber. His food was rough, 

 his drink rougher, his lodging dry planks. His 

 books were — none; his picture-gallery a coloured 

 print at the alehouse — a dog, dead, by a barrel, 

 "Trust is dead; Bad Pay killed him." Of thought 

 he thought nothing ; of hope his idea was a shilling 

 a week more wages; of any future for himself of 

 comfort such as even a good cottage can give — of any 

 future whatever — he had no more conception than 

 the horse in the shafts of the waggon. A human 

 animal simply in all this, yet if you reckoned upon 

 him as simply an animal — as has been done these 

 centuries — you would now be mistaken. But why 

 should he note the colour of the butterfly, the bright 

 light of the sun, the hue of the wheat ? This loveli- 

 •ness gave him no cheese for breakfast; of beauty 

 in itself, for itself, he had no idea. How should he ? 

 To many of us the harvest — the summer — is a time 

 of joy in light and colour ; to him it was a time for 

 adding yet another crust of hardness to the thick 

 skin of his hands. 



Though the haze looked like a mist it was per- 

 fectly dry; the wheat was as dry as noon; not a 

 speck of dew, and the pimpernels wide open for a 

 burning day. The reaping-machine began to rattle 

 as he came up, and work was ready for him. At 

 breakfast-time his fellows lent him a quarter of a 

 loaf, some young onions, and a drink from their 



