HIS LIFE AND WORK 



There were very few who had the temerity to 

 play a practical joke upon the great inventor 

 himself. His two youngest sons, Harold and 

 Stanley, would hide in the hallway when they 

 saw him approaching, and pounce out upon 

 him with wild yells in small-boy fashion, but 

 they were both privileged people. 



McCormick was a most hearty and hospitable 

 man. He was an ideal person for such a life- 

 work the abolition of famine. He was fond 

 of food and plenty of it. He loved to see a big 

 table heaped with food. The idea of hunger was 

 intolerable to him. He might well have been 

 posing for a statue of the deity of Plenty, as he 

 squared himself around to the long, family 

 dinner-table, with his napkin worn high and 

 caught at his shoulders by a white silk band that 

 went around his neck, and with a complacent, 

 "Now, then," plunged the carving-fork into a 

 crisp and fragrant fowl that lay on the platter 

 in front of him. 



The fact that McCormick seldom made a 

 social call was not due to his own choosing, but 

 because of the many worries and compulsions 



[177] 



