230 E*DIAN COEN. 



endurance, succeeds in vanquishing his antagonist in 

 the ring, punishing him within an inch of his life, 

 and pounding his features into a condition equally 

 frightful and disgusting, is triumphantly escorted from 

 the arena by an applauding multitude, and journals of 

 nearly every rank emulate each other in relating the 

 exploit and lauding the hero, whose fame goes abroad 

 on every wind of heaven, till it spans the whole coun- 

 try. Such is the reward of the human brute who, 

 by a fortuitous endowment of physical strength, has 

 been able to bruise and batter his unpitied victim to 

 the verge of annihilation. 



But here is a man who, quietly and without pre- 

 tension, has achieved a higher result in the produc- 

 tion of food for the human family than any other man 

 has ever reached, who has put on record his two hun- 

 dred bushels of corn per acre, as a standing protest 

 against the low average yield of the country, thereby 

 making himself the true champion of the cornfield 

 and the genuine hero of productive industry ; yet the 

 event has attracted but little attention, and his name 

 is scarcely heard or known beyond his own immediate 

 circle. Such is the equity of public opinion, and such 

 the civilization of the nineteenth century ! 



But though Dr. Parker, by his immense and un- 

 exampled yield of this grain, has to that extent, and 

 up to the present time, risen above all competition, 

 placing himself, in one sense, at the head of the four 

 million corn-growers of the country, and though his 

 yield, viewed in contrast with the average ratio of 

 production, appears truly prodigious, he has by no 



