The Washington herald., 1914-07-25
Riches.
By EMORY J. HAYNES.

By EMORY J. HAYNES.
To look on full load of hay is to feel rich II
is real value 1t is newly created value It comes
up from the earth and stands offering itself to the
owner of that small acre of the earth singiy and
purely his own. 1t is not the seeming of gift ex-
actly. One has the consciousness of right to all
these riches. Yet in many respects the feeling is
identical with receiving present. Nothing adequate
as and effect, has the recipient bestowed 1t
is genuine income, revenue, personal bettermsnt.
load of hay will feed the horse and COW or it will sell
for certain dollars, as you please.
The harvest is reality Not so a coupon or a
dollar in wages. These latter traceable back to
an employers willingness to buy our toll or cor
poratiou,s successful year. The harvest load allows
no middleman or agent There is really nothing be-
tween the recipient and the Creator of the whole
earth. ..
Much of the harvest indeed, came down from the
sky, by sunlight and rain. Since the race of man
began there has been disposition to attribute the
harvest to heaven. Give US this day our daily bread"
is prayer which few men would refuse to utter
Perhaps two-thirds of the people in the United
States could not figure what each persons share of
ten billion crop, yet each did get some share two
years ago and last year and will again of this years
enormous gift of creation Creation is mighty
word. It name for idea that points in GER
tain direction, but only points. The human mind
cannot fathom creation. Here, this very meadow,
last March / left footprints in snow. Here today
am loading food that has come from l know not
where. Look at these long of cocks of alfalfa.
We struggle hard to get it into the barns that
SO empty but three months ago.
No man on earth, all the men on earth COM
bined, could have made these tons of sweet-smeling
clover. When give my mind up to abstract media
tion on these riches l am bewildered defend my
troubled mental powers by stopping short. cannot
explain creation. Those ancient words, "Al things
were created by the word of His power" and Things
seen were not made of things that do appear" as
are These words are refuge for any confused
thoughts.
Come, lie on your back, piilowed on one of these
sweet-scented "tumbles." Dream on the silver and
drab clouds in the deep blue sky Such castles in the
Cir, with tower and bastion with turret and banner
and troops of angelic knights entering or departing
across the silver moat. You may have anything you
please-a cathedral, a city. mountain range 1t is
vision that never tires The haymakers, approach
ing with the cart, have to call to you to make way
so enwrapped is your revere. The children play
among the hay and imagine airships on the sky in
which they are riding. Though the hardest of work.
harvesting always seems play.
many years have been taken is the closest personal
property. The railroad bond gives up the coupon to
the scissors unfeengly. The field smiles and seems
to remind you of so many past harvests. What have
you done with all these former harvests? What but
weave them into the warp and wool of your very life
You and the living field have been companions in
vitality.
Because the field has had life in itself you have
had life in yourself. Therefore the field seems alive
1t is the very bosom of mother earth to YOU
If all that you have taken from this field in forty
years were spread out its acres this moment the
load would smother the field No grass would grow
to become hay beneath the smothering mass. If the
corn is not gathered this year can be planted
next year The field lives by being permitted to pro-
duce what you must use Like the mama of Sinai,
the bread must be gathered before more will be sent
The field is no miser 1t cannot accumulate its
wealth except it gives it in service. Yet when one
forty years of harvesting this same old
field the question arises to the Who holds
in His invisible hand the annual harvests of century
to come? And so we are back again to the mo-
mentous question, What is creation?
The scarlet shafts of sunset fash across the miles
Of harvest, westward and yet westward There never
was language which lacked a word for harvest
The savage uses small word, for game is more to
his tongue. But in direct ratio of the advances Of
civilization is the growth of words and phrases to
express the idea of harvest In our English tongue
it is the theme of poems the sentences of religious
ritual and prayer. Nor can the same mind conceive
Of superior of thankfulness than the riches
Of an abundant harvest