m a carbon print by Braun, Clement & Co. FILLING THE
WATER-BOTTLES John Andrew & Son, Sc.]

The woman who waits her turn is capable of the same feat. There is
power in every line of her figure as she stands in what has been well
described by a critic as a "majestic pose." She straightens back
to rest, with her arms on her hips, quite unconscious that there is
anything fine in her appearance.

Look a minute and you will see that she is the woman of the Angelus.
As we saw her in the other picture, with head bowed and hands clasped
on her breast, we did not realize how grand and strong she was. But
raising her head, throwing back her chest, and putting her arms on her
sides, she shows us now her full power.

Both women are dressed alike in the clothing which is now familiar
to us from the other pictures,--coarse gowns made with scanty skirts,
long aprons reaching nearly to the bottom of the dress, kerchiefs
fastened snugly about their heads, and wooden sabots. We could not
imagine anything that would become them better. It is part of the
French nature to understand the art of dressing, and this art is
found just as truly among the peasants of the provinces as in the
fashionable world at Paris.

The picture is a study in black and white which any one who cares for
drawing will wish to examine attentively. He was indeed a master who
could, with a single bit of charcoal, make us feel the witchery of
this early morning hour by the river-side. We note the many different
"tones" of the picture,--the faint soft mist of the distant atmosphere
over the marshes, growing darker on the poplars and the hilly bank in
the middle distance; the shadow of the bank in the river; the gleam of
the sunlight on the calm water mid-stream; the ripples about the jar;
the sharply defined figures of the women, dark on the side turned
from the sun; and the quivering shadow of the kneeling woman in the
ripple-broken water in front.

Among primitive peoples the hour of sunrise was a sacred time, when
hymns were sung and sacrifices were offered to the life-giving sun.
The painter Millet has expressed something of the mystic solemnity of
the hour in this picture. The sun has awakened the world to work, and
in its strength men and women go forth to labor.[1]

[Footnote 1: A fine passage on the morning occurs in Thoreau's second
chapter of _Walden_.]

IX

FEEDING HER BIRDS

As we have already seen in the picture of the Woman Feeding He