There is one great advantage in a corn-field which many other fields do not possess:  you can always walk in it!  And when the corn is higher than your head, and the great long leaves are rustling in the wind, and you can hardly see each other a dozen yards away, what a glorious thing it is to wander about amidst all this cool greenness, and pick out the biggest and the fattest ears for roasting!

You have then all the loveliness of Nature, combined with the hope of a future joy, which Art—­the art of your mother, or whoever roasts the corn—­will give you.

But the triumph of the corn-field is not yet.  The transformation of its products into Indian puddings and pumpkin pies will not occur until the golden Autumn days, when the sun, and the corn, and the pumpkins are all yellow alike, and gold—­if it was not so scarce—­would be nothing to compare to any of them.  Then come the men, with their corn-cutters—­pieces of scythe-blades, with handles fitted to them—­and down go the corn-stalks.  Only one crack apiece, and sometimes a big cut will slice off the stalks on a whole hill.

How we used to long to wield those corn-cutters!

But our parents thought too much of our legs.

When the corn has been cut and carried away, the pumpkins are enough to astonish anybody.  We never had any idea that there were so many!

At last, when the days were getting short, and the mornings were a little cool, and the corn was in the cribs, and the pumpkins were in the barn, and some of us had taken a grist to the mill, then were the days of the pudding of Indian corn and the pies of pumpkin!

Then we stayed in the kitchen and saw the whole delightful process, from the first mixing of the yellow meal with water, and the first cut into the round pumpkins, until the swelling pudding and the tranquil pie emerged in hot and savory grandeur from the oven.

It is of no use to expect those days to return.  It is easy enough to get the pies and the puddings, but it is very hard to be a boy again.

LIVING IN SMOKE.

[Illustration]

Here is a mosquito of which the bravest man might be afraid; but, fortunately, these insects are not found quite so large as the one in the drawing, for he is considerably magnified.  But when we hear even a very small fellow buzzing around our heads, in the darkness of a summer night, we are very apt to think that he sounds as if he were at least as big as a bat.

In some parts of our country, mosquitoes are at certain seasons so plentiful and bloodthirsty that it is impossible to get along comfortably in their company.  But, except in spots where no one would be likely to live, whether there were mosquitoes there or not, these insects do not exist in sufficient numbers to cause us to give up our ordinary style of living and devote all our energies to keeping them at a distance.