It was a delightful vagary of the imagination, which the morning light, looking in through the little checker-work window, gently dispelled.
The next day I bent my course in a north-westerly direction, and passed through a very fertile and beautiful section.

The scenery was truly delightful;--not grand nor splendid, but replete with quiet pictures that please the eye and touch the heart with a sense of gladness.

The soft mosaic work of the gently rounded hills, or figures wrought in wheat, barley, oats, beans, turnips, and meadow and pasture land, and grouped into landscapes in endless alternation of lights and shades, and all this happy little world now veiled by the low, summer clouds, now flooded by a sunburst between them--all these lovely and changing sceneries made my walk like one through a continuous gallery of paintings.
Harvesting had commenced in real earnest, and the wheat-fields were full of reapers, some wielding the sickle, others the scythe.

When I saw men and women bending almost double to cut their sheaves close to the ground, I longed to walk through a barley-field with one of our American cradles, and show them how we do that sort of thing.
As yet I have seen no reaping machines in operation, and I doubt if they will ever come into such extensive use here as with us, owing to the abundance of cheap labor in this country.

I saw on this day's walk the heaviest crop of wheat that I have noticed since I left London.