the successive leaps of progress. He saw
the strong-ribbed leaves thrown out, waving a thousand hands of cheerful
welcome and assurance--these blades of the corn, so much mightier than
any blades of steel. He saw the broad beckoning banners of the pale
tassels bursting out atop of the stalk, token of fecundity and of the
future. He caught the wide-driven pollen as it whitened upon the earth,
borne by the parent West Wind, mother of increase. He saw the thickening
of the green leaf at the base, its swelling, its growth and expansion,
till the indefinite enlargement showed at length the incipient ear.

He noted the faint brown of the ends of the sweetly-enveloping silk of
the ear, pale-green and soft underneath the sheltering and protecting
husk, He found the sweet and milk-white tender kernels, row upon row,
forming rapidly beneath the husk, Mud saw at length the hardening and
darkening of the husk at its free end, which told that man might pluck
and eat.

And then he saw the fading of the tassels, the darkening of the silk
and the crinkling of the blades; and there, borne on the strong parent
stem, he noted now the many full-rowed ears, protected by their husks
and heralded by the tassels and the blades. "Come, come ye, all ye
people! Enter in, for I will feed ye all!" This was the song of the
maize, its invitation, its counsel, its promise.

Under the warped lodge frames which the fires of the Iroquois had
spared, there were yet visible clusters of the ears of last year's corn.
Here, under his own eye, were growing yet other ears, ripe for the
harvesting and ripe for the coming growth. A strange spell fell upon the
soul of Law. Visions crossed his mind, born in the soft warm air of
these fecundating winds, of this strange yet peaceful scene.

At times he stood and looked out from the door of the palisade, when the
prairie mists were rising in the morning at the mandate of the sun, and
to his eyes these waving seas of grasses all seemed beckoning fields of
corn. These smokes, coming from the broken tepees of the timid
tribesmen, surely they arose from the roofs of happy and contented
homes! These wreaths and wraiths of the twisting and wide-stalking
mists, surely these were the captains of a general husbandry! Ah, John
Law, John Law! Had God given thee the right feeling and contented
heart, happy indeed had been these days in this new land of thine own,
far from ignoble strivings and from fevered dreams, far from ai