hade for
their short rest, and willingly pay our footing for the feat.
Again, we come back with book in pocket, and our own children
tumbling about as we did before them; now romping with them, and
smothering them with the sweet-smelling load--now musing and
reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings. And so
shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grandfathers the
lovemaking and the rompings of younger generations yet?

Were any of us ever really disappointed or melancholy in a
hay-field? Did we ever lie fairly back on a haycock and look up
into the blue sky and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of
scythes and the laughing prattle of women and children, and think
evil thoughts of the world and of or our brethren? Not we! Or if
we have so done, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and deserve
never to be out of town again during hay-harvest.

There is something in the sights and sounds of a hay-field which
seems to touch the same chord in one as Lowell's lines in the
"Lay of Sir Launfal," which end--

"For a cap and bells our lives we pay;
We wear out our lives with toiling and tasking;
It is only Heaven that is given away;
It is only God may be had for the asking.
There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer."

But the philosophy of the hay-field remains to be written. Let us
hope that whoever takes the subject in hand will not dissipate
all its sweetness in the process of the inquiry wherein the charm
lies.

The constable had not the slightest notion of speculating on his
own sensations, but was very glad, nevertheless, to find his
spirits rising as he stepped into the Danes' Close. All the hay
was down, except a small piece in the further corner, which the
mowers were upon. There were groups of children in many parts of
the field, and women to look after them, mostly sitting on the
fresh swarth, working and gossiping, while the little ones played
about. He had not gone twenty yards before he was stopped by the
violent crying of a child; and turning toward the voice, he saw a
little girl of six or seven, who had strayed from her mother,
scrambling out of the ditch, and wringing her hands in an agony
of pain and terror. The poor little thing had fallen into a bed
of nettles, and was very much frightened, and not a little hurt.
The constable caught her up in his arms, soothing her as well as
he could, and hurrying along till h