was a source of anxiety as well as comfort. To keep it cool,
to keep it well filled was a part of my job. No man passed it at the
"home corner" of the field. It is a delightful part of my recollections
of the harvest.

O cool gray jug that touched the lips
In kiss that softly closed and clung,
No Spanish wine the tippler sips,
No port the poet's praise has sung--
Such pure, untainted sweetness yields
As cool gray jug in harvest fields.

I see it now!--a clover leaf
Out-spread upon its sweating side!--
As from the sheltering sheaf
I pluck and swing it high, the wide
Field glows with noon-day heat,
The winds are tangled in the wheat.

The swarming crickets blithely cheep,
Across the stir of waving grain
I see the burnished reaper creep--
The lunch-boy comes, and once again
The jug its crystal coolness yields--
O cool gray jug in harvest fields!

My father did not believe in serving strong liquor to his men, and
seldom treated them to even beer. While not a teetotaler he was strongly
opposed to all that intemperance represented. He furnished the best of
food, and tea and coffee, but no liquor, and the men respected him for
it.

The reaping on our farm that year lasted about four weeks. Barley came
first, wheat followed, the oats came last of all. No sooner was the
final swath cut than the barley was ready to be put under cover, and
"stacking," a new and less exacting phase of the harvest, began.

This job required less men than reaping, hence a part of our hands were
paid off, only the more responsible ones were retained. The rush, the
strain of the reaping gave place to a leisurely, steady, day-by-day
garnering of the thoroughly seasoned shocks into great conical piles,
four in a place in the midst of the stubble, which was already growing
green with swiftly-springing weeds.

A full crew consisted of a stacker, a boy to pass bundles, two drivers
for the heavy wagon-racks, and a pitcher in the field who lifted the
sheaves from the shock with a three-tined fork and threw them to the man
on the load.

At the age of ten I had been taught to "handle bundles" on the stack,
but now at fourteen I took my father's place as stacker, whilst he
passed the sheaves and told me how to lay them. This exalted me at the
same time that it increased my responsibility. It made a man of me--not
only in my own estimation, but in the eyes of my boy companions