horses home from the plough was a triumph. Had there been a
thrashing-machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of
lying in the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves under
the skilful flails of the two strong men who belaboured them? There was
a winnowing-machine, but quite a tame one, for its wheel I could drive
myself--the handle now high as my head, now low as my knee--and watch at
the same time the storm of chaff driven like drifting snowflakes from
its wide mouth. Meantime the oat-grain was flowing in a silent slow
stream from the shelving hole in the other side, and the wind, rushing
through the opposite doors, aided the winnower by catching at the
expelled chaff, and carrying it yet farther apart. I think I see old
Eppie now, filling her sack with what the wind blew her; not with the
grain: Eppie did not covet that; she only wanted her bed filled with
fresh springy chaff, on which she would sleep as sound as her rheumatism
would let her, and as warm and dry and comfortable as any duchess in the
land that happened to have the rheumatism too. For comfort is inside
more than outside; and eider down, delicious as it is, has less to do
with it than some people fancy. How I wish all the poor people in the
great cities could have good chaff beds to lie upon! Let me see: what
more machines are there now? More than I can tell. I saw one going in
the fields the other day, at the use of which I could only guess.
Strange, wild-looking, mad-like machines, as the Scotch would call them,
are growling and snapping, and clinking and clattering over our fields,
so that it seems to an old boy as if all the sweet poetic twilight of
things were vanishing from the country; but he reminds himself that God
is not going to sleep, for, as one of the greatest poets that ever lived
says, _he slumbereth not nor sleepeth_; and the children of the earth
are his, and he will see that their imaginations and feelings have food
enough and to spare. It is his business this--not ours. So the work must
be done as well as it can. Then, indeed, there will be no fear of the