they will be when their baby takes his first step all alone! He has been creeping and crawling for a long time, but now he is big enough to stand on his feet.

This family of hard-working peasants have little time for play; they must work to keep up their home. The father, as you see, has been digging potatoes with that heavy spade. He will put them in his wheelbarrow and take them to the house. Perhaps he will have enough to last him all winter, and some to sell, too.

The potatoes he wants to keep he will bury in the ground. In those days very few people had cellars in which to keep their vegetables. Instead, they would dig a great hole in the ground, line it with straw, and then put the potatoes in, covering them with straw and earth. Then, instead of going to the grocery to buy potatoes as we do, they went out into the yard and dug them up.

The First Step

No doubt the father made this fence, the spade, the pitchfork, and even the wheelbarrow we see in the picture, while the mother, we are sure, made all their clothes except the wooden shoes. Perhaps the father made them.

In those days the mothers could not go down to the store to buy the goods for their clothes as we do now. Instead they spun thread out of flax or wool, and then wove it into cloth on a great loom something like the small looms we use in school to make rugs and hammocks. This they usually did during the winter when there was less work to do, for there were so many more things that had to be done during the summer than during the winter.

In summer they had to take care of the fruit just as our mothers do. But they did not know anything about canning it,—they would cook it a long time and make preserves or else they would dry it. They dried most of their fruit, making it just like the dried apples, peaches, and apricots we buy at the store.

In France, where this picture was painted, the women worked out in the fields just like the men. So you see how very busy they must have been. And yet they always found time to love and care for their little children.

We do not know even the name of this baby, or of his mother or father. The artist, Millet, thought that of no importance at all. He did not even care to show us their faces, any more than he would care to show us the buttons on their clothes. The important thing is the love and tenderness of this mother and father as they stop their work to guide, help, and encourage their baby in taking his first step. All his life the baby will find them never too tired or weary to help him when he needs it most.

Peasants like these, we know, lived in France, and as a rule they were very poor, although the two in our picture seem thrifty and comfortable. The trees, even the grass growing up beside the fence, seem sturdy and strong like the peasants to whom they belong.

We feel the strength of the father's extended arms, so ready and able to protect this baby. The mother, too, will do her share. Even the trees seem to bend toward these three as if to assure them of their protection.

This is a simple, homelike picture, whose chief beauty lies in its strong appeal to our feeling of sympathy with, and interest in, these honest country people.

Questions to help the pupil understand the picture. What has the man been doing? With what did he dig the potatoes? Where will he put them? Why does he not put them in the cellar? How will he keep them all winter? How will he bury them? Who made these peasants' clothes? the wheelbarrow, the spade, and the pitchfork? Why did they not buy them? How did the mother make the cloth for their clothes? When did she do this? What must she do during the summer? How did they keep their fruit? Why do you think they are a happy family?

The story of the artist. Jean François Millet was the son of French peasants who must have been very much like the father and mother in this picture. But a picture of Millet's boyhood would not be complete unless it included his grandmother. You see, that dear old lady rocked him to sleep, played with him, and kept him happy all day long while his mother, like all French peasants, worked out in the fields with his father.

It was she who was the first to discover that her little grandson liked to draw. His first drawings were copies of pictures in his grandmother's old illustrated Bible. He would listen to stories read to him from the Bible and then he would take a piece of chalk and draw a picture of what happened in the story.

Soon he began to draw large, bold pictures which covered the stone wall of their house. The grandmother was much pleased! She found a new story to read or tell him nearly every day.

Of course his father and mother saw the pictures as soon as they came home, and encouraged the boy as much as they could. The father liked to draw, too, but he could not see why Millet should be making up pictures from imagination when there were so many real things to draw. So he called his son's attention to the trees, the fields, and houses in the distance, and soon the boy began to draw these, too.

One Sunday when Millet was coming home from church he met an old man, his back bent over a cane as he walked slowly along. Something about the bent figure made Millet feel he would like to draw a picture of the man just as he looked then. Taking a piece of charcoal from his pocket, he drew a picture of him from memory. He drew it on a stone wall, and as people passed that way they recognized the man. All liked the picture very much, and told Millet so. His father, too, was delighted, and decided that his son should have a chance to become an artist.

One day the two went to an artist who lived in a neighboring town and showed him some of Millet's sketches. The artist was amazed, and at first would not believe the boy had drawn them. You may be sure he was glad to have this bright boy for a pupil. But Millet studied with him only two months, when he was called home by the death of his father.

At first it seemed as if they needed him so much at home he would never be able to go on with his studies. But soon the good people in the little village collected a sum of money and gave it to Millet, telling him it was for him to use to go to Paris and study. Millet was almost a grown man by this time, and you may be sure he was grateful and that he worked very hard while in Paris. But people did not like his pictures, and he was very poor. Other artists painted pictures of beautiful people dressed in fine clothes and living in rich homes, and so nobody cared for Millet's poor, humble peasants, dressed in their working clothes and doing the work they had to do.

It was not until Millet was an old man that people began to appreciate his work. Now most of those fashionable artists of his time have been forgotten, while the paintings of Jean François Millet have become more and more valuable.

Questions about the artist. Where did the artist live? Who took care of Millet when he was little? Why was his mother away from home so much? Who was the first one to see his drawings? What did he draw? What did he use to make the drawings? Who helped him? how? How did his father help him? Tell about the old man leaning on a cane. Where did Millet draw his picture? Who saw it? What did they say? Where did his father take him to study? What did the artist think when he saw Millet's sketches? Why did Millet go home? What did his neighbors do