42 JETHRO WOOD; 



his most hearty appreciation to the merits of 

 the new plow." 



In this connection may be told a curious 

 episode, one in itself worthy of record, and 

 strikingly illustrative of the perversities of 

 fortune to Mr. Wood in those gloomy days. 

 It is the story of a Czar and a Citizen. 



All uncertainty as to the feasibility of the 

 new plow having been removed, and actuated 

 by that broad philanthropy which was one of 

 the peculiar charms in the character of Mr. 

 Wood, he desired to extend as widely as pos- 

 sible the area of his usefulness, and concluded 

 to make the Czar of Russia, so long the chief 

 grain exporting country of the world, the 

 present of one of his plows. During the 

 Revolutionary war, then fresh in the American 

 mind, that great sovereign, Catherine of Rus- 

 sia, had been the staunch friend of this coun- 

 try, and that, too, without being impelled by 

 jealousy of Great Britain. It seems to be a 



