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-odoured cornfields where the feathered
stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain from the Missouri
to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a
thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that were
ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. The cornfields were far
apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between. It took a
clear, meditative 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.
The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night, secured
the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little to fear
from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields that
they did not notice the heat--though I was kept busy carrying water for
them--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to do in the kitchen that
they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another.
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