Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy

by Frank R. Stockton

But if any one goes out to shoot crows in this way he had better be very careful that he has an excessively mild and unimpressible horse. For, if the horse is frightened at the report of the gun, and dashes away, and smashes the wagon, and breaks his harness, and spills everything out of the wagon into the dust, mud, and bramble-bushes, and throws the gunner heels over head into a ditch, it may be that a dead crow will hardly pay him for his trouble and expense in procuring it.

But after a time the corn got so high that it was not afraid of a bird, and then we forgot the crows. But we liked to watch the corn in all its stages. We kept a sharp look-out for the young pumpkin-vines, and were glad to see the beans, which were planted in the hills with the corn in some parts of the field.

There is one great advantage in a corn-field which many other fields do not possess: you can always walk in it! And when the corn is higher than your head, and the great long leaves are rustling in the wind, and you can hardly see each other a dozen yards away, what a glorious thing it is to wander about amidst all this cool greenness, and pick out the biggest and the fattest ears for roasting!

You have then all the loveliness of Nature, combined with the hope of a future joy, which Art—the art of your mother, or whoever roasts the corn—will give you.

But the triumph of the corn-field is not yet. The transformation of its products into Indian puddings and pumpkin pies will not occur until the golden Autumn days, when the sun, and the corn, and the pumpkins are all yellow alike, and gold—if it was not so scarce—would be nothing to compare to any of them. Then come the men, with their corn-cutters—pieces of scythe-blades, with handles fitted to them—and down go the corn-stalks. Only one crack apiece, and sometimes a big cut will slice off the stalks on a whole hill.

How we used to long to wield those corn-cutters!

But our parents thought too much of our legs.

When the corn has been cut and carried away, the pumpkins are enough to astonish anybody. We never had any idea that there were so many!

At last, when the days were getting short, and the mornings were a little cool, and the corn was in the cribs, and the pumpkins were in the barn, and some of us had taken a grist to the mill, then were the days of the pudding of Indian corn and the pies of pumpkin!