The barley, rye and oats yield was also heavy. The beet sugar output was to be of gigantic proportions. A bumper corn crop loomed in promise for the fall,—three hundred million bushels were being predicted. Those who juggled with figures said that it would bring four hundred million dollars. The combined sum of all the grain figures was almost beyond comprehension. Poor conditions in many of the neighboring states, and a shortage in production in the east and south, added to the fancy that Nebraska seemed to hold the gifts of the gods in her lap that summer.

The crop moved to market in an unprecedented volume. The various transportation systems had prepared for their part in this great procession of the grains. Tens of thousands of workers had bent their backs to the task. Tens of thousands of freight cars had been assembled at various points, awaiting the signal to move. And the grain came in,—and the cars moved. To the east and to the west they moved for weeks, carrying new life blood to the nation.

It filled old Abbie Deal with an overwhelming pride. “Do you know, John,” she said to her attorney son, “it makes me happy . . . proud and happy. When I think of all those early lean years . . . the droughts . . . the grasshoppers . . . the crop failures . . . and then this! ‘Poor Nebraska’ people said. They looked down on us . . . as though we were a lot of destitute relations. They sent us old clothes and seeds and dried apples. And to think we’re sending grain in great trainloads.”

“Mother,” John chuckled, “to hear you, anybody would think you owned the state.”

“I do, John. She’s mine in spirit. I feel as though she had been on trial before a world court and the trial dragged out over many years. We, who loved her, had faith to believe she would come through unscathed. And in these later years she’s acquitted . . . and vindicated. And to think she’s one of the wealthiest states in the union . . . the only one, I guess, with no bonded indebtedness! I wish your father might have lived to see it. He was so loyal . . . and so faithful . . . and so hopeful. He didn’t live to see all his hopes fulfilled . . . but he did his part in making them materialize. They were prophets, John . . . prophets in a strange country . . . those hardy young men who ferried across the Missouri and forded the Platte and the Weeping Water and the other streams. What a legacy they’ve left you all,—farms and cities . . . cattle on a thousand hills, . . . manufactories, . . . great educational institutions . . .”

“Mother, that sounds quite oratorical. You can put all that into a speech up at Lincoln on the twenty-ninth. That’s what I came over to see you about. They told me in Lincoln to-day that they wanted you to come up and speak at the unveiling of the Donovan Marker. That’s the sixtieth anniversary, you know, of choosing the site of Lincoln for the capital. They want those present who were here then.”