An Eloquent Appreciation of the Greatest and Most Typical of All the
Agricultural Staples of America, to Which Richard J. Oglesby, the Famous
Old War Veteran and Governor of Illinois, Gave Expression.
Richard J. Oglesby, from whose lips came this eloquent
praise of Indian corn, was himself a son of the Corn Belt.
He was born in Oldham County, Kentucky, July 25, 1824. He
was elected Governor of Illinois in November, 1864, holding
the office continuously until 1869. Again, in 1872, he was
elected Governor. From 1873 to March 3, 1879, he was a
United States senator from Illinois, when he declined
reelection. In November, 1884, he was once more elected
Governor, serving four years. He died at Elkhart, Indiana,
April 24, 1899.
The following speech was delivered before the Fellowship
Club in Chicago, September 9, 1892, on the occasion of the
Harvest Home Festival. At the speaker's table that night
ex-Governor Oglesby sat between Joseph Jefferson and Sir A.
Conan Doyle.
The corn! The corn! The corn, that in its first beginning and in its
growth has furnished aptest illustration of the tragic announcement of the
chiefest hope of man! If he die he shall surely live again. Planted in the
friendly but somber bosom of mother earth, it dies. Yea, it dies the
second death, surrendering up each trace of form and earthly shape until
the outward tide is stopped by the reacting vital germs which, breaking
all the bonds and cerements of its sad decline, come bounding, laughing
into life and light, the fittest of all the symbols that make certain
promise of the fate of man. And so it died, and then it lived again.
See it--look on its ripening, waving field. See how it wears a crown,
prouder than monarch ever wore; sometimes jauntily, and sometimes, after
the storm, the dignified survivors of the tempest seem to view a field of
slaughter and to pity a fallen foe. And see the pendent caskets of the
cornfield filled with the wine of life, and see the silken fringes that
set a form for fashion and for art.
And now the evening comes, and something of a time to rest and listen. The
scudding clouds conceal the half and then reveal the whole of the moonlit
beauty of the night; and then the gentle winds make heavenly harmonies on
a thousand thousand harps that hang upon the borders, and the edges, and
the middle of the field of ripening corn, until my very heart seems to
beat responsive with the rising and the falling of the long, melodious
refrain. The melancholy clouds sometimes make shadows on the field and
hide its aureate wealth; and now they move, and slowly into sight there
comes the golden glow of promise for an industrious land.
Aye, the corn, the royal corn, within whose yellow hearts there is of
health and strength for all the nations. The corn triumphant! That with
the aid of man hath made victorious procession across the tufted plain and
laid foundation for the social excellence that is and is to be. This
glorious plant, transmitted by the alchemy of God, sustains the warrior in
battle, the poet in song, and strengthens everywhere the thousand arms
that work the purposes of life.
Oh, that I had the voice of song or skill to translate into tone the
harmonies and symphonies and oratorios that roll across my soul when,
standing, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, upon the borders of the
verdant sea, I note a world of promise; and then before one-half the year
is gone I view its full fruition and see its heaped gold await the need of
man!
Majestic, fruitful, wondrous plant! Thou greatest among the manifestations
of the wisdom and the love of God that may be seen in all the fields, or
upon the hillsides, or in the valleys. Glorious corn that, more than all
the sisters of the field, wears tropic garments. Nor on the shore of Nilus
nor of Ind does Nature dress her forms more splendidly. My God, to live
again that time, when half the world was good and the other half unknown!
And now again the corn! The corn, which in its kernel holds the strength
that shall (in the body of the man refreshed) subdue the forest and compel
response from every stubborn field; or, shining in the eye of beauty, make
blossoms of her cheeks and jewels of her lips, and thus make for man the
greatest of all inspirations to well-doing, the hope of companionship of
that sacred, warm, and well-embodied soul, a woman.