HIS LIFE AND WORK 



the stress and strain of his business-building, 

 he would stop to write Joe a short letter of good 

 wishes and advice. There was no other one 

 thing, perhaps, which proved so convincingly 

 the essential kindliness of his nature as his treat- 

 ment of Joe. 



In his family relations, too, McCormick was 

 a man of tenderness and devotion. When his 

 father died, in 1846, he was struck down by 

 sorrow. " Many a sore cry have I had as I have 

 gone around this place and found no father," 

 he wrote to his brother William. And as soon 

 as he was solidly established in Chicago, his 

 first act was to send for his mother, and to give 

 her such a royal welcome that she could hardly 

 believe her eyes. "I feel like the Queen of 

 Sheba," she said to her neighbors when she 

 returned to Virginia; "the half was never told." 



McCormick helped his younger brothers 

 William and Leander, by making them his 

 partners. William died in 1865 a great and 

 irreparable loss. He was a man of careful mind 

 and rare excellence of character, especially able 

 in matters of detail a point in which Cyrus 



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