ng country-boy, who had never seen a college, a city,
or a railroad, constructed _the first practical American reaper_. It was a
clumsy makeshift--as crude as a Red River ox-cart; but it was built on the
right lines. It was not at all handsome or well made or satisfactory; but
it was a reaper that reaped.

But McCormick soon discovered that it was not enough to invent a reaper.
What the world needed was a man who was strong and dominating enough to
force his reaper upon the unwilling labourers of the harvest fields.

Tenacity! Absolute indifference to defeat! The lust for victory that makes
a man unconscious of the blows he gives or takes! This was what was
needed, and what Cyrus McCormick possessed, to a greater degree, perhaps,
than any other man in American history.

Tenacity! It was in his blood. Back of him was the hardiest breed that was
ever mixed into the American blend--the pick of the Scots who fought their
way to the United States by way of Ireland. These Irish Scots, few as
they were, led the way across the Alleghanies, founded Pittsburgh, made a
trail to Texas, and put five Presidents in the White House.

And tenacity was bred, as well as born, into Cyrus McCormick. He went
barefooted as a boy, not for lack of shoes, but to make him tough. "I want
my boys to know how to endure hardship," said his mother. He sat on a slab
bench in the little log school house and learned to read from the Book of
Genesis. He sang Psalms with forty verses, on Sundays, and sat as still as
a graven image during the three-hour sermons, for his father was a
Presbyterian of the old Covenanter brand.

So it came to pass that Cyrus McCormick clung to his reaper, as John Knox
had to his Bible. "His whole soul was wrapped up in it," said one of his
neighbours. He grew as indifferent to the rough jokes of the farmers as
Martin Luther was to the sneers of the village priests. The making of
reapers became more than a business. It was a creed--a religion--a new
eleventh commandment.

By the time he was thirty, he had become a nineteenth century Mohammed,
ready for a world crusade. His war-cry was--Great is the Reaper, and
McCormick is its prophet.

Like Mohammed, he had his visions of future glory. On one occasion, while
riding on horseback through a wilderness path, the dazzling thought
flashed upon his mind--"Perhaps I may make a million dollars from this
reaper." This idea remained for years the driving wheel of his brain.

"The