I-XIX

July came on with that breathless, brilliant
heat which makes the plains of Kansas and
Nebraska the best corn country in the world.
It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing
in the night; under the stars one caught a faint
crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored corn-
fields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy
and green. If all the great plain from the Mis-
souri to the Rocky Mountains had been under
glass, and the heat regulated by a thermome-
ter, it could not have been better for the yel-
low tassels that were ripening and fertilizing
each other [5] day by day. The cornfields were
far apart in those times, with miles of wild
grazing land between. It took a clear, medi-
tative eye like my grandfather's to foresee
that they would enlarge and multiply until
they would be, not the Shimerdas' cornfields,
or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields;
that their yield would be one of the great
economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia,
which underlie all the activities of men, in
peace or war.

[[156]]

p155 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p156w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p157

v?