Yet what a difficult problem lies underneath all this!  While the reaper yonder slashes at the straw, huge ships are on the ocean rushing through the foam to bring grain to the great cities to whom—­and to all—­cheap bread is so inestimable a blessing.  Very likely, when he pauses in his work, and takes his luncheon, the crust he eats is made of flour ground out of grain that grew in far distant Minnesota, or some vast Western State.  Perhaps at the same moment the farmer himself sits at his desk and adds up figure after figure, calculating the cost of production, the expenditure on labour, the price of manure put into the soil, the capital invested in the steam-plough, and the cost of feeding the bullocks that are already intended for the next Christmas.  Against these he places the market price of that wheat he can see being reaped from his window, and the price he receives for his fattened bullock.  Then a vision rises before him of green meads and broad pastures slowly supplanting the corn; the plough put away, and the scythe brought out and sharpened.  If so, where then will be the crowd of men and women yonder working in the wheat?  Is not this a great problem, one to be pondered over and not hastily dismissed?

Logical conclusions do not always come to pass in practice; even yet there is plenty of time for a change which shall retain these stalwart reapers amongst us, the strength and pride of the land.  But if so, it is certain that it must be preceded by some earnest on their part of a desire to remove that last straw from the farmer’s back—­the last straw of extravagant labour demands—­which have slowly been dragging him down.  They have been doing their very best to bring about the substitution of grass for corn.  And the farmer, too, perhaps, must look at home, and be content to live in simpler fashion.  To do so will certainly require no little moral courage, for a prevalent social custom, like that of living fully up to the income (not solely characteristic of farmers), is with difficulty faced and overcome.

CHAPTER XXVII

GRASS COUNTRIES

On the ground beside the bramble bushes that project into the field the grass is white with hoar frost at noon-day, when the rest of the meadow has resumed its dull green winter tint.  Behind the copse, too, there is a broad belt of white—­every place, indeed, that would be in the shadow were the sun to shine forth is of that colour.

The eager hunter frowns with impatience, knowing that though the eaves of the house may drip in the middle of the day, yet, while those white patches show in the shelter of the bramble bushes the earth will be hard and unyielding.  His horse may clear the hedge, but how about the landing on that iron-like surface?  Every old hoof-mark in the sward, cut out sharp and clear as if with a steel die, is so firm that the heaviest roller would not produce the smallest effect upon it.  At the gateways where