Do you want a subject for a wonder lesson? You are embarrassed by riches. They are here on every hand by tens of thousands. Almost anything will do. I know nothing more common or more striking than the Indian corn growing in our gardens and in the fields everywhere about us, one of the most widely known and most useful grains in the world. What a wonder story you can tell of this marvelous plant! "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." When, as a child, I used to read these familiar words in the Bible, I always thought it meant our yellow corn planted in the spring-time and gathered to the crib in the autumn. Years later I was surprised to learn that this "corn" was a kind of wheat or barley, and that all the wealth of Jerusalem could not in those days have bought an ear of our common corn.
There is a story told of a selfish farmer who had gotten a new variety of Indian corn, and to a neighbor who wanted to buy a little of it, he replied, "Not a grain." In his ignorance he thought he could keep it all on his own farm. He did not know of stamen and pistil, pollen and ovary—perhaps only of horses and hogs and dollars—knowledge very good to have it a small fraction of a large unit, but if it be all a man has, then of little value in the great account. His neighbor, more knowing than he, taught him a lesson in botany, and had the corn, both without buying it, without his consent, and without risk of a lawsuit. The new corn happened to be planted along the line fence between the farms. The neighbor, seeing this, selected the best grains from the middle of some of his best ears for seed, and planted them on the other side of the fence. The land was equally good; the rains fell, and the sun shone alike on each field. The corn grew and flourished and neared the time when the staminate blossoms of the tassel would shed their pollen upon the silken bloom below. He noted the right moment, and then cut the plume (the tassel, Gray calls it) from every stock of his own corn, so that no pollen from his own field should fertilize his corn—it must all come from the other side of the fence. The new corn was rich in pollen, which floated on the air and fell here and there with little regard to line fences. The life forces went on working out their results in the laboratory of nature, and when the husking-time came, both hauled to their barns nearly the same kind of corn—much to the chagrin and somewhat to the edification of the stingy farmer.
The lesson of the pollen is in this story, and a deeper lesson yet for the growing boy and girl. It is good teaching. But we want to look at the corn. Take the circuit from the seed dropped into the ground in the late spring to the seed from the ear in the fall. The green shoot comes up; the leaves of the beautiful, vigorous thing are rapidly developed—in the warm June days after a rain how they grow!—then the rustling, two-edged sword-blades of July; the light yellow plume of staminate blossoms, whose pollen is grains of pearl under the microscope; and the floss silk of the pistillate flower (the ear), pink in color, soft in texture, with its broad, close-fitting sheath (the husk) for protection to the ovary.
This long silken tassel is for use much more than for beauty, tho it is very beautiful. We go to market and buy our dozen ears of corn, husk them, and strip down their soft and glossy threads of silk, without a thought of Almighty design. Look closer! Remove your husk carefully, so that no thread of silk is disturbed. Start with the grain farthest from the silken tassel; take the next, the next, the next; each has its own thread in orderly succession, and it stands at one end of that thread—where is the other end? Outside of the sheath, each thread ending in its stigma, a wonderful structure, hundreds of them together making up the soft, rich, silken tassel, swaying in the breeze and kissed by the sunlight, waiting for the touch of the new life and energy that must come from above. The pollen boxes burst, and shed abroad their treasure of pearls—for the shape is pearl. As the fine shower falls through this warm summer air, these waiting stigmas grasp it eagerly, gather of it abundantly, and through the long style (the thread of silk) connecting the light and life without with the embryo seed within, the vitalizing influence passes—how, no man can tell—until every ovule is fertilized, and develops in God's good way into a seed, that can be sown the next season, to repeat the old tale of marvel as from the beginning—another link in a chain of apparently endless succession.
And you and I and the farmer may be as little interested in this marvel, as ignorant of it and as blind to it, as are the horses and the cattle, or the trees and the stones. Let us get this thought clearly into our own minds, and then preach this great gospel of wonder to our children. But if you can not feel it, you will not do much with it. Go away and pray God to give you the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the feeling heart. Alas for our children when the only things we can teach them are a little ciphering, which we call arithmetic; the cast-iron order of letters in words, which we call spelling; some sounding of words from the printed page, which we call reading; a little geography and history, most of which is soon forgotten; some rules in grammar that we ourselves too often violate and hear others violate almost without thought or silent protest!
Let us know and try to teach things that may startle and awaken and bless, things that have in them the enduring quality. The world about us is full of marvels, suggesting the Divine. I have taken but one. Look at the cherry tree or any other tree in fruit. How different from the corn, but no less wonderful! Look at the strawberry or any other berry—at anything that has life and law behind it, or law without life. Be a poet when you talk of these things, that is, full of the spirit of wonder and reverence—feeling somewhat as Moses felt when from out the burning bush the Almighty spake to him. From out field and bush and tree the same God speaks to us as to him. Can we too see and hear? If we can not, then let us pray that some healer may come to touch our blind eyes, and unstop our deaf ears, if not for ourselves at least for our children, that their finer sensibilities may be awakened, and their lives be blessed.
