200 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
that he had reason to apprehend famine. In passing near a 
well, where the caravans stopped, he perceived a little sack 
on the sand. He took it up, saying, “God be praised, it is, I 
think, a little flour.” He hastened to open the sack, but at the 
sight of its contents, he cried, “ How unfortunate I am ! it is 
only some gold powder!” 
We shall extract from that delightful work, Howitt’s “Book 
of the Seasons,” a slight sketch of the harvest in England. 
“The harvest is a time for universal gladness of the heart. 
Nature has completed her most important operations. She has 
ripened her best fruits, and a thousand hands are ready to reap 
them with joy. It is a gladdening sight to stand upon some 
eminence, and behold the yellow hues of harvest amid the 
dark relief of hedges and trees, to see the shocks standing 
thickly in a land of peace; the partly-reaped fields and the 
clear cloudless sky shedding over all its lustre. There is a sol¬ 
emn splendour, a mellowness and maturity of beauty, thrown 
over the landscape. The wheat-crops shine on the, hills and 
slopes, as Wordsworth expresses it, ‘ like golden shields cast 
down from the sun.’ For the lovers of solitary rambles, for all 
who desire to feel the pleasures of a thankful heart, and to 
participate in the happiness of the simple and the lowly, now 
is the lime to stroll abroad. They will find beauty and enjoy¬ 
ment spread abundantly before them. They will find the 
mowers sweeping down the crops of pale barley, every spiked 
ear of which, so lately looking up bravely at the sun, is now 
bent downward in a modest and graceful curve, as if abashed 
at his ardent and incessant gaze. They will find them cutting 
down the rustling oats, each followed by an attendant rustic who 
gathers the swath into sheaves from the tender green of the 
young clover, which, commonly sown with oats to constitute 
the future crop, is now showing itself luxuriantly. But it is 
in the wheat-field that all the jollity, and gladness, and pictu¬ 
resqueness, of harvest are concentrated. Wheat is more par¬ 
ticularly the food of man Barley atfords him a wholesome 
but much-abused potation; the oat is welcome to the homely 
board of the hardy mountaineers, but wheat is especially and 
