baked in a hole filled with ashes and coals, but it was often eaten raw. It was not easy to have a variety of food, and there were times when it was very difficult to obtain anything. When food was abundant, the people feasted, and when it was scarce, they were often hungry. How would you like to wait for your breakfast while your father went to the woods or to the river in search of something to eat?

When the meals were prepared, they were not neatly served as yours are, but each person took his portion and sat on the ground while he ate it.

Fig. 1.—Indians at Dinner.

All of this seems very strange to you, I know. If you live in the city, you are accustomed to seeing the butcher, the baker, the milkman, and the grocer call every day. There are stores where people can buy whatever they want to eat, drink, or wear. You wonder how any one could live in such a way as I have described, but there are people who live in this fashion to-day, although you have never seen any of them. They are uncivilized. Where do you think they are to be found? When people live in this way, it takes most of their time to provide themselves with the things that are necessary to life. They have little opportunity to improve their ways of living and of thinking.

Civilized people divide their work. Some provide food, some make clothing, some build houses, and some furnish fuel. Each one does his or her part. In this way, you see, they learn to do their work better and better, because each gives much time and thought to one kind of work. This plan gives each one time to study and to learn something about the world and its people. Think how much better our homes, our clothing, and our food are, than are those of uncivilized people, and how many other advantages we have.

Fig. 2.—White People at Dinner.

It is only possible to live as we do, when each one works for others as well as for himself. If any one fails to do his part, the rest must suffer until some one is found to take his place. It is to prepare yourself to do your part in some useful work for others, that you are going to school day by day. You do not now know just what that work is to be, but I want you to remember that all honest work is noble. It is not so important what work you do, as it is that you should do your work well. No matter what your work may be, you can carry sunshine in your face and helpfulness in your heart. If you do this, you will be known and loved. Hard work, coarse clothes, and lack of money can never hide these things, neither will the finest of clothing cover a selfish or untruthful nature.

Let us look at this dinner table loaded with good things to eat and drink. There are bread, butter, meat, vegetables, milk, tea, fruits, and other things. You see at once that many persons must have worked to provide this food, for only a small part of the work was done in the kitchen. If these things could but speak, they might tell you stories as wonderful as fairy tales. They have been gathered here from the fertile plains of the West, from the sunny South, from Brazil, from the islands of the Pacific Ocean, from far-off China, and even from the waters of the sea.

THE STORY OF A LOAF OF BREAD

In the dark granary of a farmer's barn in North Dakota once lived a modest family of grains of wheat. The bright, warm days of the summer time, during which they had been placed in this dark room, soon grew shorter and cooler. The swallows, whose mud nests were in the rafters overhead, told the wheat brothers that winter was coming, and then flew away to the balmy southland.

Soon biting winds and blinding snow came sweeping over the level land. Sometimes the farmhouse was almost hidden under the drifts, and the farmer had to shovel out a path to the barn, so that he could feed the horses and cattle. By and by the days grew warmer, the snow disappeared, and the birds returned one by one. The farmer and his men got out their plows and harrows, and prepared the soil for the seeds soon to be planted.

The wheat was now shoveled into sacks and taken to the fields. Here it was placed in great machines drawn by horses, which scattered it evenly over the land and at the same time covered it with soft soil. The men whistled and sang as they worked, and blackbirds, bluebirds, and larks flew back and forth, singing and searching for bugs and worms, as well as for the shining kernels of wheat.

The wheat was not content to remain underground, but kept trying to push itself out into the world. One night there came a warm shower, and the next morning what looked like tiny, green blades of grass appeared all over the field.

All through the spring and summer the wheat kept growing, and finally there appeared at the ends of the stalks clusters of kernels, just like those which the farmer had planted. Some of these kernels had produced families of twenty or thirty. These clusters are called heads.

Fig. 3.—Harvesting Wheat in Southern California.

As the south wind passed over the field it brought the wheat messages from Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and other states, telling of relatives who were already turning golden in the summer sunshine. One day some of the kernels thought they heard a voice from California. Do you think they did?

The grain in some of the fields was called winter wheat. This was because the grain had been sown the autumn before, and had remained in the ground all winter, covered by a blanket of snow. Why was it sown in the fall? The wheat of which I am telling you was called by the farmer spring wheat.

Soon machines, each drawn by several horses, appeared. They cut the waving grain, and bound it up in bundles called sheaves. These were set up in double rows to dry, and afterward put into another machine which separated the kernels from the stalks, which were now called straw. This work the farmer calls threshing. See if you can find out how this used to be done.

After threshing, the wheat was put into sacks and taken to the nearest railroad station. Freight cars then carried it across the level prairies to the beautiful city of Minneapolis, built beside the Falls of Saint Anthony. What river is this city on? Of what use are the falls?

There are tall buildings called elevators here in which the wheat was stored for a time. Before being put into the elevators it was examined and graded. As there was wheat from many farms it could not be kept separate, so each farmer was told how much he had, and how it graded.