Tall Corn
To a man who works on the land the signs of good husbandry *re plain. He looks at a field, the height, colour and richness of its grass, the absence of weed, neatness of its hedges and tidiness of its ditches, and knows the character of the owner, for land reflects the nature of those who tend it. Sometimes one sees signs of lavish care. It is a long time since I have seen a field of oats so long in the straw and rich in the ears as one on the slope of a little farm in Cnarvon. The yield was beyond expectations and beyond the binder too, because at its highest setting the knife still cut the stalk of a length that overhung the sheets, and the sheaves could not be made and tied because the corn simply would not pass through.' Two men were harvesting. One worked with a scythe and one with a sickle. Behind them lay two or three hundred sheaves waiting to be tied in the old-fashioned way with a few strands lifted from the bunch and used as a " strap." The old tilting reaper would have been a help, but it is years since I last saw one.
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