United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It is hardly necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the old barbarous custom of killing a man on the harvest-field or the threshing-floor had doubtless passed into a mere pretence long before the classical era, and was probably regarded by the reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a rough jest which the license of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a comrade, or even on their master himself.

The officer had been eager and confident, and occasioned his own fall; and even now Johnny had not deserted him. He appeared on horseback at the barn where threshers were at work; told them what had happened; gave them the key of the cellar door, bade them off and help all they could; and said he was riding for the doctor.

The apple tree ship was a wreck on the rocks of discontent. The hay had all been cut and stored away in the barn. The excitement and fun of the grain harvesting was over and the big stacks were waiting the threshers. It was not time for fall apple picking and the cider mill, nor to gather the corn, nor to go nutting. There was nothing, nothing, to do.

September proved as dry as August was wet, only half an inch of water fell; and the seedings would have been slow to start had they depended for their moisture upon the clouds. By October 1, however, green had taken the place of brown on nearly all the sixty acres we had tilled. The threshers came and threshed the wheat and oats. Of wheat there were 311 bushels, of oats, 1272.

And when the arrival of the linen and the shoes revived it one afternoon in early summer, it was lost sight of again in a rush of hoeing and herding. So it was not until late fall, when all the crops were harvested and the threshers had come and gone, that the family began once more to consider it.

It was harvest home at Harar, a circumstance which worked us much annoy. In the mornings the Amir, attended by forty or fifty guards, rode to a hill north of the city, where he inspected his Galla reapers and threshers, and these men were feasted every evening at our quarters with flesh, beer, and mead.

During the weeks that followed, Edwin was very busy, but most of the time that he was at work about the chores or in the harvest-field where the men were gathering in the ripened grain or preparing for the threshers, he was reviewing in his mind the scene on eternity, the talks with Frank, the prayer-meeting, and what Mrs. Miller had told him in regard to the church.

Elvine was a prey to a hopelessness which nothing seemed able to relieve. Summer was not yet over, although the signs of the coming fall were by no means lacking. The hard trail, like some carefully set out terra-cotta ribbon upon a field of tawny green, took them through a region of busy harvesting. The tractors and threshers were busily engaged in many directions.

Going looking for the makings of a cake which I will give to the threshers, the threshers to give me a whisp of straw, the whisp of straw I will give to the cow, the cow to give me milk, milk I will give to the cat, cat to scrape butter, butter to go in claw of hound, hound to hunt deer, deer to swim water, water to wet flag, flag to edge axe, axe to cut a rod, a rod to make a gad, a gad to hang Manachar, who ate my raspberries every one."

The story says that he got back his goat, his sheep and his bullock and made it an excuse that he had seen three magpies on the road for not going to the fair to buy a shawl for his wife Ann. The robbers were very frightened when he told them about the threshers coming and they went away from that part of the country.