Glean, to gather fallen heads of wheat or other grain. Where land is dear, fields small, and labor cheap, women and children go over the fields at harvest time, gathering up scattered grain. Now that breadstuffs are raised and harvested largely by machinery, and transportation is less expensive than formerly, even the poor do better to work for wages and buy bread. There is now very little gleaning. Among the Hebrews the owner of a field was forbidden to glean. Scattered grain was left for the poor. Ruth, it may be remembered, went gleaning in the fields of Boaz, her husband's rich kinsman. In that calm Syrian afternoon, memory, a pensive Ruth, went gleaning the silent fields of childhood, and found the scattered grain still golden, and the morning sunlight fresh and fair.--Curtis.