There
was a tale of Hugh's having in his boyhood contrived some kind of an engine
that carried water from a valley to a mountain community; another of his
having seen a clock in a store in a Missouri town and of his having later
made a clock of wood for his parents; and a tale of his having gone into
the forest with his father's gun, shot a wild hog and carried it down the
mountain side on his shoulder in order to get money to buy school books.
After the tale was printed the advertising manager of the corn-cutter
factory got Hugh to go with him one day to Tom Butterworth's farm. Many
bushels of corn were brought out of the corn cribs and a great mountain of
corn was built on the ground at the edge of a field. Back of the mountain
of corn was a corn field just coming into tassel. Hugh was told to climb
up on the mountain and sit there. Then his picture was taken. It was sent
to newspapers all over the West with copies of the biography cut from the
Cleveland paper. Later both the picture and the biography were used in the
catalogue that described the McVey Corn-Cutter.
The cutting of corn and putting it in shocks against the time of the
husking is heavy work. In recent times it has come about that much of the
corn grown on mid-American prairie lands is not cut. The corn is left
standing in the fields, and men go through it in the late fall to pick the
yellow ears.
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