406 EUEAL LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND. 



When toil ceases, the farmer's daughter covers the 

 table with brown damask, and prepares a simple enter- 

 tainment as neat as it is bountiful, and the more grateful 

 because it is unostentatious. The laborers, with a joyful 

 appreciation of the luxuries of the frugal board, express 

 their delight by complimenting in their awkward way the 

 neat hands of the damsel who has ministered to their 

 wants. No fairy queen could move with more grace or 

 act with more benevolence than this young girl, among 

 these less refined swains, administering the bounties of 

 the table. "With hands as white as her teacups, and 

 cheeks that rival the downy carmine of the peach, no 

 lordly assemblage was ever attended by a more lively 

 embodiment of grace, tenderness, and wit. 



To the field, before they have consumed their remain- 

 ing leisure in gossip and jovialty, they are summoned by 

 the distant muttering of a dark cloud that moves slowly 

 up the horizon. A current of wind bears it steadily in a 

 direction that may save them: from its force ; but they 

 know it may be leading along another cloud to' which it 

 has been wedded by electricity. The trembling mirage 

 that has all the noonday been suspended over the arid 

 fields still ghmmers in the hot beams of the sun. The 

 balm of a whole season of flowers and sweet-scented herbs 

 is ascending like an incense-offering to heaven. A fresh 

 breeze, laden with the moisture of the south-wind, im- 

 proves all these odors, and renders toil less wearisome to 

 the swain. All hands are now busy ; the lumbering 

 wagon has entered the field ; the hay is raked into swaths 

 and rolled into heaps, and hands and feet, rakes and 

 pitchforks, are engaged in complicated manoeuvres, by 

 which the hay is rapidly transferred from the field to the 

 cart, and from the cart to the hay-loft. Their implements 

 are laid aside, and the haymakers' work is done. 



The cloud that gleamed with occasional fire and stimu- 



