ing of the day.

My eye always passes over the roofs filled with flowers, warbling, and
sunlight, with the same pleasure; but to-day it stops at the end of a
buttress which separates our house from the next.

The storms have stripped the top of its plaster covering, and dust
carried by the wind has collected in the crevices, and, being fixed
there by the rain, has formed a sort of aerial terrace, where some green
grass has sprung up. Among it rises a stalk of wheat, which to-day is
surmounted by a sickly ear that droops its yellow head.

This poor stray crop on the roofs, the harvest of which will fall to the
neighboring sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which
are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the
beautiful walks I took as a child through my native province, when the
threshing-floors at the farmhouses resounded from every part with the
sound of a flail, and when the carts, loaded with golden sheaves, came
in by all the roads. I still remember the songs of the maidens, the
cheerfulness of the old men, the open-hearted merriment of the laborers.
There was, at that time, something in their looks both of pride and
feeling. The latter came from thankfulness to God, the former from the
sight of the harvest, the reward of their labor. They felt indistinctly
the grandeur and the holiness of their part in the general work of the
world; they looked with pride upon their mountains of corn-sheaves, and
they seemed to say, Next to God, it is we who feed the world!

What a wonderful order there is in all human labor!

While the husbandman furrows his land, and prepares for every one his
daily bread, the town artizan, far away, weaves the stuff in which he
is to be clothed; the miner seeks underground the iron for his plow; the
soldier defends him against the invader; the judge takes care that
the law protects his fields; the tax-comptroller adjusts his private
interests with those of the public; the merchant occupies himself in
exchanging his products with those of distant countries; the men of
science and of art add every day a few horses to this ideal team, which
draws along the material world, as steam impels the gigantic trains of
our iron roads! Thus all unite together, all help one another; the
toil of each one benefits himself and all the world; the work has been
apportioned among the different members of the whole of society by a
tacit agreement. If, in this apportionment, errors