said softly. "I shouldn't think anybody could
thanksgive 'thout a gran'mother and gran'father."

THE MASTER OF THE HARVEST[23]

BY MRS. ALFRED GATTY.

A good old-fashioned story for the older boys and girls to
read on the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day.

The Master of the Harvest walked by the side of his cornfields in the
early year, and a cloud was over his face, for there had been no rain
for several weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching of the
cold east winds, and the young wheat had not been able to spring up.

[Footnote 23: From "Parables from Nature."]

So, as he looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows
before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest
would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought
of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint
against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth,
because it was so dry and unyielding; against the corn, because it had
not sprung up.

And the man's discontent was whispered all over the field, and all
along the long ridges where the corn seeds lay; and when it reached
them they murmured out, "How cruel to complain! Are we not doing our
best? Have we let one drop of moisture pass by unused, one moment of
warmth come to us in vain? Have we not seized on every chance, and
striven every day to be ready for the hour of breaking forth? Are we
idle? Are we obstinate? Are we indifferent? Shall we not be found
waiting and watching? How cruel to complain!"

Of all this, however, the Master of the Harvest heard nothing, so the
gloom did not pass away from his face. On the contrary, he took it
with him into his comfortable home, and repeated to his wife the dark
words that all things were going wrong; that the drought would ruin
the harvest, for the corn was not yet sprung.

And still thinking thus, he laid his head on his pillow, and presently
fell asleep.

But his wife sat up for a while by the bedside, and opened her Bible,
and read, "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are
the angels."

Then she wrote this text in pencil on the flyleaf at the end of the
book, and after it the date of the day, and after the date the words,
"Lord, the husbandman, Thou waitest for the precious fruit Thou hast
sown, and hast long patience for it! Amen, O Lord, Amen!"

After which the good woman knelt down to pray, and as she prayed she
wept, for