XI.] CONCLUSION. 



keep their names out of print. Then, when the 

 letter comes back; with its date and its fanciful 

 signature, how proud they are ! The paper is 

 sure to go to market, " That's a good letter^ 

 eant it, Mr. Jolterhead ? " Jolterhead reads it, 

 suspects its source, and then says something in 

 praise of it. " Good peeaper, eant it; do you take 

 it in ? " The conversation ends with advice to 

 brother Jolterhead to take in the Farmer's 

 Journal; and thus is the circle of stupidity 

 extended. 



173. Not to waste oui time, however, any 

 longer upon this wretched thing, here we have 

 the indubitable fact of the ripening ; and that, too, 



of the LARGEST CROP of CORN THAT I EVER 



SAW in MY LIFE. I have read, or heard, 

 of a hundred bushels to the acre in America ; 

 but, when I was last in that country, I wrote 

 from Long Island to an old friend in Penn- 

 sylvania, who, and whose father had been far- 

 mers, in that State, all their lives long, to tell me 

 what had been his average crop of corn, and what 

 his average crop of wheat. He said of the corn 

 that it was from twenty to thirty bushels; and of 

 wheat, that it was from fourteen to seventeen 

 bushels ; and the Winchester bushel prevails, 

 exclusively, all over that country. Another fact, 

 and a very interesting one, concerning the Ame- 

 rican crop of corn, is the following, taken from 



