More Men And More Men Were
Put On Day By Day, And Women To Bind The Sheaves, Till The Vast Field
Held The Village, Yet They Seemed But A Handful Buried In The Tunnels Of
The Golden Mine:
They were lost in it like the hares, for as the wheat
fell, the shocks rose behind them, low tents of corn.
Your skin or mine
could not have stood the scratching of the straw, which is stiff and
sharp, and the burning of the sun, which blisters like red-hot iron. No
one could stand the harvest-field as a reaper except he had been born and
cradled in a cottage, and passed his childhood bareheaded in July heats
and January snows. I was always fond of being out of doors, yet I used to
wonder how these men and women could stand it, for the summer day is
long, and they were there hours before I was up. The edge of the
reap-hook had to be driven by force through the stout stalks like a
sword, blow after blow, minute after minute, hour after hour; the back
stooping, and the broad sun throwing his fiery rays from a full disc on
the head and neck. I think some of them used to put handkerchiefs doubled
up in their hats as pads, as in the East they wind the long roll of the
turban about the head, and perhaps they would have done better if they
had adopted the custom of the South and wound a long scarf about the
middle of the body, for they were very liable to be struck down with such
internal complaints as come from great heat.
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