The most jovial operation of the year to the hands is the wheat-harvest
in June; but the introduction of the mechanical reaper has taken away
something of its peculiar character. Much of the grain, however, is
still cut down with the cradle. The strongest negro always leads the
dozen or more mowers, and thus incites his fellows to keep closely in
his wake. As they move along, they sing, and the sound, sonorous and not
unmelodious, is echoed far and wide among the hills. Behind them follows
a band of men and women, who gather the grain into shocks or tie it in
bundles.

After the harvest is over, the time of the laborers is given up entirely
to the tobacco, which has now grown to a fair size. Their first task is
to "sucker" it,--that is, cut away the shoots that spring up at the
intersection of each leaf and the stalk, and which if left to grow would
absorb half the strength of the plant. They also examine the leaves very
carefully, to destroy the eggs and young of the tobacco-fly. Day after
day they go over the same fields, finding newly-laid eggs and
newly-hatched young where only twelve hours before they brushed their
counterparts off to be trampled under foot. As the tobacco ripens, it
becomes brittle to the touch and is covered with dark yellow spots, and
when this appearance is still further developed the time for cutting has
arrived, which generally is in the first month of autumn, and always
before frost, which is as fatal to this as to every other weed. The
plant is now about three feet in height, with eight or nine large
leaves, the stalk having been broken off at the top in the second stage
of its growth. On the appointed day a dozen or more men with coarse
knives split the stalk of each plant straight down its middle to within
half a foot of the ground. They then strike the plant from the hill and
lay it on one side. The leaves soon shrink under the rays of the sun and
fall. One of the laborers who follow the cutters then takes it up and