the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain;
the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal
the corn, and had to be prevented by steel traps, like rats. To-day wheat
is so cheap, it scarcely pays to carry it to market. Some farmers have it
ground, and sell the flour direct to the consumer; some have used it for
feeding purposes--actually for hogs. The contrast is extraordinary.
Better let the hogs eat the corn than that man should starve. To-day the
sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old
barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its
voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. Up it
rises again as the sheaves are cast in--hum, hum, hum; the note rises and
resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest
tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad
over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing
larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music--a chant telling of
the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the
clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the
wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang
above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow
stalks, the list of living things delighting in it--all have departed.
The joyous life of the wheat is ended--not in vain, for now the grain
becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. Outwards
the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the
shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a
new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the
beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of
the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the
autumn afternoon! I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower,
like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the
resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and