tly how many turrets
they had, or how large a company they could accommodate with good
entertainment. Now, sir, such being the case, all of us having such
real, but too often, alas! neglected possessions in Spain, I am not
surprised that Lowell writes to me that he finds the Spanish Legation
one of the busiest in Europe. He is to establish our titles, and the
work is not without its difficulties. Let us send him our God-speed. May
he come back to us to assure us, as he better than any other can do, of
the henceforth undisturbed enjoyment of all our castles in Spain.
[Applause.]

RICHARD OGLESBY

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