ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS. 103 



They sat in the corner of the field. There were no 

 trees for shade ; they had been cut down as injurious 

 to corn, but there were a few maple bushes and thin 

 ash sprays, which seemed better than the open. The 

 bushes cast no shade at all, the sun being so nearly 

 overhead, but they formed a kind of enclosure, an open- 

 air home, for men seldom sit down if they can help 

 it on the bare and level plain ; they go to the bushes, 

 to the corner, or even to some hollow. It is not 

 really any advantage ; it is habit ; or shall we not rather 

 say that it is nature? Brought back as it were in 

 the open field to the primitive conditions of life, they 

 resumed the same instincts that controlled man in 

 the ages past. Ancient man sought the shelter of 

 trees and banks, of caves and hollows, and so the 

 labourers under somewhat the same conditions came 

 to the corner where the bushes grew. There they 

 left their coats and slung up their luncheon-bundles 

 to the branches ; there the children played and took 

 charge of the infants; there the women had their 

 hearth and hung their kettle over a fire of sticks. 



II. 



In August the unclouded sun, when there is no 

 wind, shines as fervently in the harvest-field as in 

 Spain. It is doubtful if the Spanish people feel the 

 heat so much as our reapers ; they have their siesta ; 

 their habits have become attuned to the sun, and it 

 is no special strain upon them. In India our troops 

 are carefully looked after in the hot weather, and 

 everything made as easy for them as possible ; with- 

 out care and special clothing and coverings for the 



