"How wrong to throw away such a nice piece as that!" he remarked to a
friend at his side.
"Indeed it was," she replied. "Whoever threw it away never thought how much
it cost to make that piece of bread." And she began to tell how the hard
ground must be broken by the plough, and smoothed by the harrow, to make
it ready for the seed; then, after the seed has been sown and covered up,
water, air, and sunlight are all needful, that the roots may sink down deep
into the earth, and the green stalks shoot up into the light; so that where
there was once only the bare brown field may be seen "first the blade, then
the ear, after that the full corn in the ear"--the harvest-field in all its
glory. As the "Sower's Song" says:
"Fall gently and still, good corn;
Lie warm in thy earthly bed,
And stand so yellow some morn,
For man and beast must be fed."
Then come the reaping and the threshing, and the winnowing and crushing of
the grain, and the making of the flour into bread, and its baking. All this
must be done before our tables can be furnished with "our daily bread."
[Illustration: WITH THE REAPERS.]
For the birds, which "neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse
nor barn," God makes the grass to grow of itself; but all those
seed-bearing plants, which He has given to man, must now be cultivated.
Rice needs a great deal of water that it may grow; and corn, if no care
is given to its cultivation, soon becomes but a poor and useless sort of
grass.
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