breezes whispered and birds sang without disturbing their
studies. A horn--perhaps a cow's horn--summoned the school from
play and scattered classes to recitations.

"Instead of broadcloth coats, the students generally wore a far
more graceful garment, the hunting shirt, home-spun,
home-woven, and home-made, by the industry of wives and
daughters.

"Their amusements were not less remote from the modern taste of
students--cards, backgammon, flutes, fiddles, and even marbles
were scarcely known among these mountain boys. Firing pistols
and ranging the field with shotguns to kill little birds for
sport, they would have considered a waste of time and
ammunition. As to frequenting tippling shops of any
denomination, that was impossible because no such catchpenny
lures for students existed in the country, or would have been
tolerated. Had any huckster of liquors, knicknacks, and
explosive crackers, hung out signs in those days, the old
Puritan morality of the land was yet vigorous enough to abate
the nuisance. The sports of the students were mostly gymnastic,
both manly and healthful--such as leaping, running, wrestling,
pitching quoits and playing ball. In this rustic seminary a
considerable number of young men began their education, who
afterwards bore a distinguished part in the civil and
ecclesiastical affairs of the country."

Valley Inventions

The Valley of Virginia has often been termed "the granary of the South."
It is no wonder that farmers from time to time have tried to shorten
their labor in the wheat fields by inventing machines to do their work.

The name Robert McCormick means little or nothing to most of us, yet on
his farm, Walnut Grove, near Lexington he made repeated attempts to
invent a workable reaper. His son, Cyrus, had watched with growing
interest each of his father's undertakings. His regrets must have been
as keen as the elder McCormick's when they realized one May morning in
1831 that the clumsy machine could not replace the hand scythe and
cradle.

Cyrus knew something of machinery and determined to improve his father's
poor invention in time for the next harvesting. During the intervening
six weeks he stayed in the workshop as much as the busy growing season
would allow and secured the ready help of a slave boy, Joe Anderson.

In July when the wheat was ready to