32 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



exact significance and the flavor of that other 

 word '^ maize,'' which to this day probably seems 

 a trifle snobbish to some of us. It may be a mat- 

 ter of vexation to Hawkeyes, also, that one of the 

 best essays so far written on the great grain — 

 Miss Edith Thomas's Mondamin — hails from so 

 far east as Ohio. But the corn-belt is spacious. 

 The King nods across southern fields to King Cot- 

 ton, and far northward offers chivalrous greeting 

 to the brown-haired flax. His domain proper 

 ranges westward to the lands of the prairie dogs, 

 and his colonies, weak or strong, make a chain 

 across the continent. On September sixteenth, 

 some forty years ago, Miss Cooper wrote, in south- 

 ern New York, ' ' The maize-stalks are drying and 

 withering as the ears ripen. . . All through the 

 summer months, the maize-fields are beautiful with 

 their long, glossy leaves ; but when ripe, dry, and 

 colorless, they will not compare with the waving 

 lawns of other grains. The golden ears, however, 

 after the husk has been taken off, are perhaps the 

 noblest heads of grain in the world ; the rich piles 

 now lying about the fields are a sight to rejoice the 

 farmer's heart." She adds two paragraphs on 

 the history of the pumpkin, and on its relations to 

 corn — ''When they are harvested and gathered 

 in heaps, the pumpkins rival the yellow corn in 

 richness; and a farm-wagon carrying a load of 

 husked corn and pumpkins, bears as handsome a 



