In 1786 his attachment to William Pitt was rewarded with a baronetcy. Sir John's domestic life was singularly happy. On referring to the old book already mentioned, we read: "He has been twice married to two of the most beautiful women in the island. His first lady, a Miss Maitland, died prematurely in the bloom of youth. His present lady is the daughter of the late Lord Macdonald, and by her he has a son, George, and other children."
It cannot be doubted that Sir John loved the limelight, possessed an unbounded self-conceit, lacked the saving sense of humour, and over-estimated his own achievements. But these vanities were but the fitful smoke in the blue flame of a burning energy. What a lesson in industry for the youth of South Africa. Fifty years of ceaseless toil, author of thirty-nine volumes and 367 pamphlets. This Scottish agriculturist died in 1835 at the ripe age of eighty-one, and is buried according to an ancient family rite, in Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh—the friend and confidant of three English kings.
CYRUS H. McCORMICK: INVENTOR OF THE REAPER
"I expect to die in harness, because this is not the world for rest. This is the world for work. In the next world we will have the rest."—Cyrus H. McCormick.
It is hardly to be expected that those people who devoutly chant in a million churches the fourth sentence of the Lord's Prayer should think with gratitude of any other person than the Divine Giver of all Good. Yet it is strange to reflect that although every schoolboy knows something of the life of our least Poet Laureate, not one in ten thousand could tell you the career of the man who responded in a truly miraculous manner to the heartfelt, world-voiced matin of both rich and poor, "Give us this day our daily bread."
Cyrus H. McCormick, the inventor of the reaping machine, was born in the eventful year 1809. It was the birth year of Darwin and Tennyson, of Mendelssohn, Gladstone, and Lincoln. He was born on Walnut Grove Farm, amidst the mountains of Virginia, one hundred miles from the sea. He came of that virile stock that has proved to be the main strength of the Republic, that gave Washington thirty-nine of his generals, three out of four members of his Cabinet, and three out of the five judges of the Supreme Court—the Scots who migrated to Ulster, and thence to the United States. Robert McCormick, the father of Cyrus, was a fairly large farmer, and an inventor of no mean ability. The little log workshop is still shown to the enquiring tourist where father and son moulded and mended machinery on many a rainy day. Indeed, we are told that the McCormick homestead was more like a small factory than a farmer's home, so full was it of rural industries—spinning and weaving, soap and shoes, butter-making and bacon-curing. And it is more than likely that the ceaseless activity of his wise and Celtic mother taught Cyrus the value of each moment of time.
Ever since he was a child of seven it was his father's ambition to invent a reaper. He made one, and tried it in the harvest of 1816, but it proved a failure. It was a fantastic machine, pushed from behind by two horses. It was highly ingenious, but it would not cut the corn, and was hauled off the field to become one of the jokes of the countryside. Hurt by the jests of his neighbours, he locked the door of his workshop and toiled away at night. Early in the summer of 1831 he had so improved his reaper that he gave it another trial. Again it failed. True, the machine cut the corn fairly well, but it flung it on the ground in a tangled heap. Satisfied that there was something radically wrong, Robert McCormick gave up the reaper after having worked at it for over fifteen years.