y of you have ever seen wooden shoes? How is the mother
dressed? What makes you think it must be a cool day? What do the
shadows tell us of the time of day? What game did these children like
to play? What did they have to play with? Who made their toys and
clothes? What did they do when their mother called them? What makes
you think they were happy children?

=To the Teacher:= After the story is told, the children should be
allowed to act out the picture. Stools or kindergarten chairs placed
in the schoolroom doorway, and a spoon, a doll, a cart, and a basket,
which the children will gladly bring from home, are all the
accessories needed. It is well to let the pupils act out the game
which the children are supposed to have been playing when the mother
called them, as well as the story in the picture itself.

=The story of the artist.= Shall we tell you something about the man,
Millet, who painted this picture?

Jean Francois Millet was the son of poor French peasants. His father was
a good man, very fond of music and of all beautiful things out of doors.
Sometimes he would say to his son, "Look at that tree, how large and
beautiful it is; as beautiful as a flower!" He would call his son's
attention to the fields, the sunsets, and all things around him.

Millet's mother worked in the fields with his father all day long. So
it was his grandmother who rocked him to sleep and cared for him while
he was very little. She was the one who named him Jean after his
father, and Francois after the good St. Francis. She was a religious
woman, and almost the only pictures Millet saw when he was a boy were
those in his grandmother's Bible. He copied them many times, drawing
them with white chalk on the stone wall. This pleased the grandmother
very much, and she encouraged him all she could.

When he was eighteen years old Millet drew his first great picture. This
is how it happened. As he was coming home from church he met an old man
with bent back leaning on a cane as he walked slowly along. Something
about the bent figure made Millet want to draw a picture of him. So,
taking some charcoal from his pocket, he drew the picture on a stone
wall. The people passing by knew at once who it was; they were pleased
and told Millet so. His father, too, was delighted, for he himself had
once wished to be an artist. He decided that his son should become what
he had wished to be; so he sent him to a good teacher.

Millet worked very har