ABOUT WINTER WHEAT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3229, 4 November 1881, Page 4

ABOUT WINTER WHEAT.

* The wheat never looked better,' remarked the sad passenger, gazing out of the window.

'Where is there any wheat ?' asked the fat passenger. *I don't know,' was the calm reply. 'I flon't really know that there is any wheat in Kern County, but everybody talks about the wheat looking finely at this time of the year, and I know that it must be the proper thing to say.' ' That is wheat in the field on our right,' said the man on the wood box.

' That green stuff ?' echoed all the other passengers, rushing to the window. ' Yes,' he replied,' that bright, dark green Btuff.'

'Why,' they all chorused again, in disappointed tones,' it looks like grass!' 'I though wheat was yellow,' said the passenger with sandy goatee; ' don't they always talk about the yellow fields and the golden grain ?' * That's when it's ripe,' exclaimed the man on the wood box.

* Wheat yellow when it is ripe !' incredulously cried the sad passenger;'l guess you are thinking of corn meal. How enn they make white bread out of yellow wheat ?'

' There are two kinds of wheat, ain't there,' asked the tall, thin passenger.

• Yes,' said iho man on the* wood-box, 'spring and winter.' * How do they differ ?'

* Well,' the man on the wood-box said. * spring wheatis planted in the spring, and winter wheat is planted in the winter.'

' I have heard farmers talk of fall wheat,' the fat passenger said. e Yes,' the man on the wood-box assented. And then to their looks of inquiry, ' it is planted in the fall.' ' I thought,' the passenger with the sandy goatee remarked,' that .spring wheat was planted in the fall and harvested in the spring.' The man on the wood-box said, ' Yes, he believed, come to think of it, that was the way of it.' 'And winter wheat then,' the sad passenger suggested, is planted in the spring and harvested in the winter.'

The man on the wood-box shifted uneasily on the seat and looked nervously up and down the car.

' Well, yes/ he said he guessed that was the way. 'Then fall wheat ?' asked the sad passenger earnestly. > And the man on tha wood-box bit the end of a match, took off his hat and looted into it, and finally said he believed it wasn't planted until next fall. ' Then you get three crops of wheat,' said the sad passenger, ' off the same field in one year.' The man on the wood-box said, ' Yes,' but so faintly that he had to repeat it twice before they could all hear him. ' Which'is the best wheat ?' asked the tall, thin passenger. The man on the wood-box was heard by a strange passenger to whisper to the .stovepipe that * he wished long-un was dead,' but he replied and said :

"For bread?"

" Yes, for bread."

The man on the wood-box opened his mouth to reply, when he caught the eye of the woman who talks bass fixed Upon him with a strange, intense expression. He got off his perch, walked down the aisle to the dissused and abandoned water-tank, looked round for the long-lost tin cup, drew some hypothetical water into it out of the empty tank, took a long drink of nothing out of it, and as he came back to his seat the subdued croak of the woman who talks bass, and the composed countenances of the other passengers convinced him that they had been laughing about something. B\it he' didn't care what it was about, so he didn't ask, and presently he drew his hat down over his eyes and dissembled sleep.—Burdette.