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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 fol- 
lowed 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 show- 
ing itself luxuriantly. But it is in the wheat 
field that all the jollity, and gladness, and pic- 
turesqueness of harvest are concentrated. Wheat 
is more particularly the food of man. Barley 
affords him a wholesome but much abused pota- 
tion ; the oat is welcome to the homely board of 
the hardy mountaineers, but wheat is especially 
and every where the ‘ staff of life. To reap 
and gather it in, every creature of the hamlet is 
assembled. The farmer is in the field like arural 
king amid his people. 
Around him ply the reaper band 
With lightsome heart and eager hand, 
And mirth and music cheer the toil,— 
While sheaves that stud the russet soil, 
And sickles gleaming in the sun, 
Tell jocund autumn is begun. 
“ The labourer, old or young, is there to col- 
lect what he has sown with toil, and watched in 
its growth with pride; the dame has left her wheel 
and her shady cottage, and, with sleeve-defended 
arms, scorns to do less than the best of them ; 

