How Fares the Fruit ?'
I got up next morning thinking to discover disaster. But the corn- field showed no signs of the struggle. The farmer will not have to cut by hand, for the wheat stands firm, in spite of the succession of showers that have followed that breaking of the weather. Nor are the cherry orchards badly damaged. Much of the fruit is splitting with the wet, and much of it will not keep ; but, on the whole, the crop is coming in well, still to the sound of tin trays, old klaxons and shot-guns. There is one old gypsy picker who has a reiterant cry to scare the birds; which he lets out every time he hears a shot. It runs, "Hoiohoi I Yah! Yah! " with a lingering fall. It has an Oriental quality, and makes me want tc turn my face to Mecca and spread my praying-mat.
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