"We cross the prairie as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free! "We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine! "We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go. "We go to plant her common schools On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells. "Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man. "No pause nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun! "We'll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!" The Civil War ended all these conflicts, and since then Kansas has been eminently peaceful. It is now the leading State of the corn belt which broadly crosses the middle of the United States. Its vast corn crops make the wealth of the people, and as they may be good or poor, the Kansan is in joy or despair. One year the farmers will be overwhelmed with debt; the next brings an ample crop, and they pay their debts and are in affluence. Thus throbs the pulse as the sunshine and rains may make a corn crop in the State that sometimes exceeds three hundred millions of bushels; and then there are not enough railway cars available to carry away the product. In a good crop the cornstalks grow to enormous heights, sometimes reaching twenty feet to the surmounting tassel, and a tall man on tip-toe can about touch the ears, while a two-pound ear is a customary weight, with thirty-five ears to a bushel. These vast cornfields, watched year by year and crop after crop by the hard-working wife of a Kansas farmer, caused her to write the touching lyric which has become the Kansas national hymn, Mrs. Ellen P. Allerton's "Walls of Corn": "Smiling and beautiful, heaven's dome Bends softly over our prairie home. "But the wide, wide lands that stretched away Before my eyes in the days of May; "The rolling prairie's billowy swell, Breezy upland and timbered dell; "Stately mansion and hut forlorn-- All are hidden by walls of corn. "All the wide world is narrowed down To walls of corn, now sere and brown. "What do they hold--these walls of corn, Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn? "He who questions may soon be told-- A great State's wealth these walls enfold. "No sentinels guard these walls of corn, Never is sounded the warder's horn; "Yet the pillars are hung with gleaming gold, Left all unbarred, though thieves are bold.