40 JETHRO WOOD; 



ready for use, he met with another difficulty 

 in the unwillingness of the farmers to accept 

 them. ' What/ they cried, in contempt, ' a 

 plow made of pot metal ? You might as well 

 attempt to turn up the earth with a glass plow- 

 share. It would hardly be more brittle.' 



u One day he induced one of the most skep- 

 tical neighbors to make a public trial of the 

 plow. A large concourse gathered to see how 

 it would work. The field selected for the test 

 was thickly strewn with stones, many of them 

 firmly imbedded in the soil, and jutting up 

 from the surface. All predicted that the plow 

 would break at the outset. To their astonish- 

 ment and Wood's satisfaction, it went around 

 the field, running easily and smoothly, and 

 turning up the most perfect furrow which had 

 ever been seen. The small stones agmnst 

 which the farmer maliciously guided it, to test 

 the ' brittle ' metal, moved out of the way as 

 if they were grains of sand, and it slid around 



