TALL CORN.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 50, 1 May 1863, Page 2 (Supplement)

TALL CORN.

(From the New York Life Illustrated.) We grow "tall corn" in America. The world is beginning to find it out. Every year brings the fact more and more to the perceptive and digestive faculties of all civilized humanity. 'Like all great truths, it did not gain credit at once. True, everybody sees it here with his own eyes, but not so on the other side of the water.. The first accounts of the productiveness of our "Western prairies were read by our Buckinghamshire farmers with about as much respect as the fish stories of Sinbad. It took even the highest dignitaries of the land a long while to get fairly up to the level with the actual fact. Even at this day there is an ear of corn in the British Museum which enjoys a very distinguished consideration as a curiosity. It divides attention, we do not say equally, but certainly fractionally with the Nineveh bull and the great Kohinoor. It is a perfect marvel to our Cousin John Bull ; and yet it is not a very extraordinary ear-ofcorn after all. It reached its present distinction something in this wise.

In the month of January, 1847, at a certain dinner party in London, at which Lord Joha Russel, Lord Mbrpeth, and many other distinguished men were present, the conversation turned upon the Irish famine, and the remark was made by Lord John that he rejoiced that so good a substitute for the native bread-stuff had been found as Indian corn. Turning to Mr. Bates, the American partner of the house of Baring Brothers, his lordship went on to say :

" Why, Bates, some of the coTjs have twelve or fourteen rows of grain on them."

, Mr. Bates coolly replied

!' " Ye«, my lord, I have seen from twenty tb twenty-four rows on a cob."

" That is a rare Yankeeism," was the pleasant retort of the Premier ; and the whole company shouted in approval.

The burst of merriment over, Mr. Bates bought his peace by a wager of a dinner for the company all round that he could produce such an ear.

•" Done !'' exclaimed Lord John ; and the bet was clinched.

The dinner passed off, Mr. Bates returned home, but not entirely at ease. He had done a strange thing.; for the first time in his life he had made an engagement he was not absolutely certain of his ability to fulfil. 'He had misgivings that he had rashly pledged the honor of his country. It had been long since he had looked upon an American crib; and however patiently he winnowed the cornucopia of his memory, he found that the cobs of his early days . Jrad gone glimmeringthrough the ; lapse of time, among the things that were, and were now, so far off that he couldn't count the rows. •' He was, as^laiitus would say— -reductus qd JTivjtus-— in Yankee " ha

up." " But fortune favors the brave. It happened that a friend of ours dropped in the next day at the counting-house of the Barings. Mr. Bates, with brightening face, hailed him and made known his difficulty. . '

" You are safe," was the response ; "if I live to get home, you shall have even a bigger ear than you have promised/

Our friend G— — soon returned/and straightway wrote to Messrs. Rogers and Reynolds, of Lafayetie, Ind., tel ling the story, and begging them, for the honor of the country, to come to the rescue, and turn the tables ©n Lord John, showing them what Yankees could do.

In the July following, Mr G received by express from Lafayette a nicely arranged box, containing sis ears of horse-tooth corn, two of which had twenty-nine raws, two thirty-one, and two thirty-twip; The box -was forthwith addressed to JL Bates, Esq., care of Messrs Baring Brothers and Co., shipped by the Black Ball Line. It reached its destination, and Lord John Russell (first Lord of the Treasury, third son of the late Duke of Bedford by the second daughter of George Viscount Torrington, and lineal descendant of Lord "William Russell, the martyr of liberty) "acknowledged thecom." The dinner was won. Joshua Bates did not perpetrate a " Yankeeism,' 1 and Che British Museum holds (the trophy. Vive la Repitbllque I — Exchange.