The sweeping hills were dotted with shocks of rye and wheat or were covered with standing grain, and their acres shone like gold in the level rays of the morning sun. Far and near the farmers worked in their fields of corn and other grain, giving vent to their joy by short snatches of song or loud, clear whistling, as full and flute-like as the notes of the red birds that sang in the trees which bordered them. The drought and extreme heat had forced grain into premature ripeness and the yield thereby was somewhat diminished. We passed men and boys on the road going to some distant grainfield. They bade us good morning with pleasant smiles. In like spirit we went to reap our harvest. Theirs would feed the hungry, and they could at least make out its value as so many bushels worth so many dollars and cents. They saw in their vast yellow acres not the hungry their grain could feed, but only a very small pile of gold. Watching the mellow colors of the broadening landscape as we climbed the long waves of earth we saw the yellow bundles of grain gleaming like heaps of gold, and we seemed to hear Ruth singing as she gleaned in the fields of Boaz and the lark carolling in the sky above as sweetly as when we listened enraptured along the lovely meadows of the Meuse or on the battle grounds of Waterloo. The value of our harvest only Eternity may gauge. As we watched the grain falling like phalanxes of soldiers cut down in battle a nameless sadness filled our souls as we thought: "Though every summer green the plain This harvest cannot bloom again." Out where the land was broken by ravines and the woodbine hung its long green ladders from the ironwood tree or made pillars of Corinthian design of the gleaming sycamores which stood along the banks of a stream, two boys were fishing. It was hard to decide which made the more radiant picture: the softly sculptured landscape or the glow of joy that beamed from those shining boyish faces. How often had streams like this lured and detained many well meaning lads who had only a bent pin for a fishing hook and fish worms for bait, yet who had better luck than many an older person you may know, for they baited their hooks with their happy hearts. Well do we recall how the siren songs of a little brook in early spring, or it may have been the golden willows filled with gurgling red wings, caused a court scene at school. The teacher was one of that type who study the stars by night but never his boys by day. He knew the golden willow not from the fragrance of its early blossoms or the gurgling melodies of the red-winged blackbird's song, but from the fact that they make excellent switches which cut keenly, bend but do not break. The only time he ever visited the brook was when he needed a new bundle of switches. With a jury like that, little wonder the case went clean against Willie.