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The Gleaners

HE young women as much work as would be expected from of our country are any man. In some parts of Germany, not much in the England and other countries you may see habit of working the Gleaners coming home at night, happy in the harvest in proportion to what they are bringing fields. To be sure with them. Some fields yield rich returns, they do in some yet even the best do not make the young places, performing Gleaners rich. light kinds of work The following beautiful poem, by Mary and SO making Howitt, gives a graphic picture of the themselves quite Gleaners in the "golden fields of bending as useful in the corn:" fields as they would be in the kitchen.

By common consent the heavier kinds of labor belong to men. Now, in many countries, ruddy, rosy-cheeked girls go into the grain fields, and some of them do W HEN on the breath of autumn breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating like an idle thought The fair white thistle-down, Oh, then, what joy to walk at will Upon the golden harvest hill!

What joy in dreamy ease to lie Amid a field new shorn, And see all round on sun-lit slopes The piled-up stacks of corn ; And send the fancy wandering o'er All pleasant harvest fields of yore.

I feel the day-I see the field, The quivering of the leaves, Again I see a little child, His mother's sole delight- God's living gift unto The king, good Shunammite; To mortal pangs I see him yield, And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills, The fields of Galilee, And good old Jacob and his house Binding the yellow sheaves ; And at this very hour I seem To be with Joseph in his dream.

I see the fields of Bethlehem, And reapers many a one, Bending into their sickles' stroke- And Boaz looking on; And Ruth, the Moabite so fair, Among the Gleaners stooping there.

That eighteen hundred years ago Were full of corn, I see:

And the dear Saviour takes his way 'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath day.

O, golden fields of bending corn, How beautiful they seem; The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves, To me are like a dream.

The sunshine and the very air Seem of old time, and take me there.

The exquisite picture of the Gleaners, of barley one by one than it would have which illustrates this poem, was painted been to sit down and mope, and complain by Val Prinsep, of the Royal Academy, about her misfortunes. She had a willing London. The original painting is in that heart and hands; she had health and superb collection, and very few in the beauty; she had upon her cheek the whole magnificent gallery are more ad- brown flush which is finer than all mired. There is something extremely painted complexions; she was a true picturesque in the figures. Not only do woman, and deserved the honor which we see this in the grouping, but we see it was given her. in the dress, and in the manner in which There is a beautiful interior meaning the grain is carried. The Gleaners are to these stories of the Gleaners. Some coming home after a successful day of would think it beneath their dignity to labor. The sun is just setting, while the pick up one head of grain at a time; they harvest moon is appearing in the sky. would want to go out with a reaping Sweet sleep will refresh the toilers, and machine, and do wonders in a day. The in the morning they will go forth again. life of many a person is cursed with an May they always be successful, and in ambition to do everything at once, to get every walk of life come home well laden rich in one year, to get an education in with sheaves! one school-term, to get to maturity at the Do not suppose, young people, that age of sweet sixteen. We are not conthese Gleaners are engaged in any ignoble tent to grow slowly and surely. We need employment. Since the story of Ruth, to learn that little things in life are great, who gleaned in the fields of Boaz, has and that there is a nobility in picking up Deen written, the world should have noth- one head of wheat at a time. If we can ing to say against honest industry; it was not do wonders, we can at least be far better for Ruth to pick up the stalks Gleaners.