HIS LIFE AND WORK 



sickles; and the poor old Reaper that would not 

 reap was hauled off the field, to become one of 

 the jokes of the neighborhood. 



This failure did not dishearten Robert Me- 

 Cormick. He persevered with Scotch-Irish te- 

 nacity, but in secret. Hurt by the jests of the 

 neighbors, he worked thenceforward with the 

 door of his workshop locked, or at night. He 

 hid his Reaper, too, upon a shelf inside the 

 workshop. "He allowed no one to see what 

 he was doing, except his sons," said Davis Mc- 

 Cormick, who is now the only living person in 

 the neighborhood with a memory that extends 

 back to that early period. * Yes," said this lone 

 octogenarian, "Robert McCormick was a good 

 man, a true Christian; and he worked for 

 years to make a Reaper. He always kept his 

 plans to himself, and he told his wife that if 

 visitors came to the house, she should send one 

 of the children to fetch him, and not allow the 

 visitors to come to his workshop." 



By the early Summer of 1831, Robert McCor- 

 mick had so improved his Reaper that he gave 

 it a trial in a field of grain. Again it was a 



im 



