two who work so well together in the field are sure to work well
together in the home. The man has the serious, capable look of a
provident husband. The woman looks like a good housewife. That shapely
hand throwing the seed so deftly into the ground is well adapted to
domestic tasks.

We may easily identify our picture as a familiar scene in Millet's
Barbizon surroundings. We are told that "upon all sides of Barbizon,
save one, the plain stretches almost literally as far as the eye can
reach," and presents "a generally level and open surface." "There are
no isolated farmhouses, and no stone walls, fences, or hedges,
except immediately around the villages; and were it not all under
cultivation, the plain might be taken for a vast common."[1]

It is evident, then, that we here see the plain of Barbizon and true
Barbizon peasants of Millet's day. The villagers of the painter's
acquaintance were on the whole a prosperous class, nearly all owning
their houses and a few acres of ground. The big apple-tree under which
the donkey rests is just such an one as grew in Millet's own little
garden.

Fruit trees were his peculiar delight. He knew all their ways,
and "all their special twists and turnings;" how the leaves of the
apple-tree are bunched together on their twigs, and how the roots
spread under ground. "Any artist," he used to say, "can go to the East
and paint a palm-tree, but very few can paint an apple-tree."

[Footnote 1: From Edward Wheelwright's _Recollections of Jean Francois
Millet,_ in _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1876.]

IV

THE WOMAN SEWING BY LAMPLIGHT

Though the peasant women of France have so large a share in the
laborious out-of-door work on the farms, they are not unfitted for
domestic duties. In the long winter evenings they devote themselves
to more distinctly woman's tasks, knitting and sewing, sometimes even
spinning and weaving. Their housekeeping is very simple, for they live
frugally, but they know how to make the home comfortable. Many modern
inventions are still unknown to them, and we should think their
customs very primitive, but on this account they are perhaps even more
picturesque.

There is contentment in every line of the face of this Woman Sewing by
Lamplight. It is the face of a happy young wife and mother. She
sits close by her baby's bedside that she may listen to his gentle
breathing as he sleeps, and she smiles softly to herself while she
sews. It is a sweet fa