here was once a stalk of wheat that grew in the middle of a field. It was very tall and it lifted its head high and nodded in the wind.

All around it were a thousand other stalks not quite so tall. Every one was looking up at the sun and bowing to its neighbor, and saying, "Good morning."

"How bright and golden we are!" said the tall stalk; "and how beautiful we look, standing together like a great army of soldiers! The sun shines to cheer us. And when the gentle rains fall, how sweet and refreshing they are!"

"Yes, yes!" said the other stalks, waving back and forth in the morning breeze. "All the world is very kind to us. We have nothing to do but to live and grow and become bright and golden like the sun."

"Ah," said the tall stalk. "It is true that we must live and grow and become yellow and golden. But after that, there must be something else for us to do."

The very next day the farmer came into the fields to look at his wheat. He took some of the bearded heads and rubbed them between his hands. They were full of plump, round, golden grains.

"What fine flour these will make, and what good bread for little Alice," he said. "The wheat is fully ripe and it must be cut at once."

Then all the golden-headed stalks waved back and forth in the wind. "Now we understand it all," they whispered. "It is for the sake of the farmer's fair little girl that we are here.

"She must live and grow and be healthy and beautiful. There is nothing that can help her to do this so well as good bread made from the best of wheat."

Very soon the golden stalks were cut. The wheat was threshed and ground into the finest of flour. And then the flour was baked into fresh, white loaves of bread.

But little Alice did not know that her bread was made of the wheat that she had seen growing in the big field where the daisies bloomed.

—W. E. Baldwin.