One small field he had prepared especially for his seed corn. By this time he had come strongly to believe in the yellow-red strain of corn he had originally obtained from Daniel Brown, and this special field had been planted to that variety exclusively. Hiram had from the very start prepared this field in a particular way. It had been a fallow piece on which had been thrown with the manure spreader during the winter about ten tons of fertilizer to the acre. As soon as he could get on the field with his heavy horses he disked the piece both ways. This enabled him to plow at least eight inches deep, and he put three of the Percherons on the plow. Hiram disked the field again after plowing, and harrowed it twice, making the soil as loose in the end as a garden plot. With this preparation, the bottom of the seed bed was as loose as the top and the plant roots when they got to growing, found plenty of room to develop. Hiram did not put this corn in until the first of May. He planted it one grain to the hill, sixteen inches apart in the row, and the seed had been so carefully selected that he had an almost perfect stand all over the field. Hiram was no friend to replanting in any case. At the time he put the corn in he sowed in the row fifty pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre. When the corn was up a few inches and the root system began to develop, the young manager of Sunnyside Farm sowed a hundred pounds to the acre of a special forcing fertilizer--straddling the row with the cornplanter and sowing this special fertilizer in rows down the middle. One day, about the time the bulk of Hiram's crop was hardening, Mr. Brown drove along and Hiram hailed him and asked him to walk with him through this field of seed corn. The grizzled old fellow noted the strong stalks, the wide blades, and the heavy ears with brightening visage. He loved corn! On Hiram's invitation to do so, he tore the husk away from several ears. "By gum!" exclaimed the old man, "I thought I raised good corn. I always have raised good corn--the best in this county, if I say it who shouldn't. But you've got me beat, Mr. Strong--you've got me beat. "This variety here, wherever you got it, is better than my best, and how even it runs! I never saw the like before. Where'd you get it? I thought you were raising corn from seed you bought of me?" "I am," Hiram told him with a smile. "Where'd you get it? I'd like to compare this new variety with my kind of corn," went on the farmer, not heeding Hiram's assurance. "This is your corn you've got hold of, Mr. Brown," Hiram said. "You don't tell me!" "I certainly do. I consider it the best corn for this soil that I could find. It is only better than yours because I take more pains in selecting and testing the seed than you do." "By gum! I can't believe it."