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Worse than all, I had made a little private adventure of my own, which was very successful, and the result o' which I was bringin' home in gold-dust; and now every nugget o' that is at the bottom o' the sea. So you see, Molly, it's loss an' disaster everywhere nothin' but a black horizon all round." Jeff glanced quickly at Miss Millet. This seemed to bear somewhat on their recent discussions.
Yet they had even more associations with it than other village families. Here our painter's father had early shown his talent for music at the head of the choir of boys who sang at the Sunday service. Here at one time his old uncle priest, Charles Millet, held the office of vicar and went every morning to say mass.
The importance attaching to it is shown by the fact that the Sun goddess herself is represented as engaging in its cultivation and that injuring a rice-field was among the greatest offences. Barley, millet, wheat, and beans are mentioned, but the evidence that they were grown largely in remote antiquity is not conclusive.
In that part of the garden grew scattered cherry trees; among them grain and vegetables, purposely of mixed varieties: wheat, maize, beans, bearded barley, millet, peas, and even bushes and flowers. The housekeeper had devised such a garden for the poultry; she was famous for her skill—her name was Mrs. Hennibiddy, born Miss Turkee.
Both did wonderful work, but Millet painted the peasant, worn, patient steadfast, overwhelmed with toil; Breton, a peasant full of energy, grace, vitality, and joy. Millet painted peasants as he knew them, and hardly any one could have known them better, for he was himself peasant-born. His youth was hard, and the scenes of his childhood were such as in after life he became famous by painting.
As he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to mouth, charmingly describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of Harper, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian, Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages having been acquired by him during the few months of the Russo-Turkish war.
But Millet has taken you into his confidence. He says: "Come, see what I once saw. Do you ever remember any such couple working in the field?" And you immediately, and unconsciously to yourself, remember just such a bent back and reverent, uncovered head.
First the goddess took a great heap of seeds of wheat, barley, millet, poppy, lentils, and beans, and mixed them all together, and then bade Psyche separate them into their different kinds by nightfall.
So his figures, like those of Greek sculpture, reproduce no particular model, but are the general type deduced from the study of many individuals. Since the death of Millet, in 1875, much that is interesting and valuable has been written of his life and work.
Food abounds, and very little labor is required for its cultivation; the soil is so rich that no manure is required; when a garden becomes too poor for good crops of maize, millet, etc., the owner removes a little farther into the forest, applies fire round the roots of the larger trees to kill them, cuts down the smaller, and a new, rich garden is ready for the seed.
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