The Dial of Love; A Christmas Book for the Young

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 Excerpt: ...The dogs are with the children too, glad to be tumbled about and made playfellows of. Look! now we are got into a great oat-field. The men are mowing down the rich, bright flood of corn, and women and boys follow and gather the swaths into sheaves and bind them, and rear them up in what they call shocks. But we will go on to the wheat-field, for there are the gleaners as well as the reapers. Here we are! hark! they are not mowing here, but cutting down the corn with sickles. That is because the wheat-straw is much stronger, and there is a danger, if it be very ripe, of the shock of the mowing scattering much of its grain from the ears. But many farmers now mow their wheat; and there are also machines invented for reaping corn, that can do as much in a day as a dozen men. But here you see the reaping going on in the oldfashioned way that was used when Boaz reaped his fields, and Ruth, the handsome and good Moabitess, came to glean. I like this old-fashioned way of reaping: it' is connected with so many pleasant associations, and it does not make men inferior to machinery. They get good wages, and have all the work to do that is done. See what famous gleanings the women and children are gathering. Little boys and girls are coming to their mothers to get them to tie up their gleanings; bigger boys and girls are proud to do that themselves. And, besides the gleanings, all the gleaners have bags hung before them, or their aprons turned up into a sort of bags to put all the ears into that have broken short off from the straw. Only think what plenty there will be in the cottages. Wheat for rich furmenty, and milk--delicious food! Wheat to carry to the mill; and then what famous puddings, and dumplings, and nice brown loaves! I can see the cottage children with Dro...