THE ROYAL CORN
[Speech of Ex-Governor Richard Oglesby at the banquet of the Fellowship Club, Chicago, September 9, 1894, on the occasion of the Harvest-Home Festival. The Toast-master was Franklin H. Head, and the toast that he gave to each speaker was, "What I Know About Farming." In the report by Volney W. Foster, member of the Club, it is recorded that the Governor rose slowly, after being called upon by the toast-master, and was seemingly waiting for an inspiration. He looked deliberately upon the harvest decorations of the room and finally his eyes seemed to rest upon the magnificent stalks of corn that adorned the walls. He then slowly and impressively paid the following impromptu tribute to the corn.]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—The corn, the corn, the corn, that in its first beginning and 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 sombre bosom of the 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 germ which, breaking all the bonds and cerements of its sad decline, comes 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. And so my people died. By some unknown, uncertain and unfriendly fate, I found myself making my first journey into life from conditions as lowly as those surrounding that awakening, dying, living, infant germ. It was in those days when I, a simple boy, had wandered from Indiana to Springfield, that I there met the father of this good man [Joseph Jefferson] whose kind and gentle words to me were as water to a thirsty soul, as the shadow of a rock to weary man. I loved his father then, I love the son now. Two full generations have been taught by his gentleness and smiles, and tears have quickly answered to the command of his artistic mind. Long may he live to make us laugh and cry, and cry and laugh by turns as he may choose to move us.
But now again my mind turns to the glorious corn. 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 pendant caskets of the corn-field 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 to 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. Glorious corn, that more than all the sisters of the field wears tropic garments. Nor on the shore of Nilus or of Ind does nature dress her forms more splendidly. My God, to live again that time when for me half the world was good and the other half unknown! And now again, the corn, that 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 inspiration to well-doing, the hope of companionship of that sacred, warm and well-embodied soul, a woman.
Aye, the corn, the Royal Corn, within whose yellow heart 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, transmuted 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 tones the harmonies, the symphonies and oratorios that roll across my soul, when standing sometimes by day and sometimes by night upon the borders of this 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 love of God, that may be seen in all the fields or upon the hillsides or in the valleys!