was not yet in general use. The Woods Dropper, the
Seymour and Morgan hand-rake "contraptions" seemed a long way in the
past. True the McCormick required four horses to drag it but it was
effective. It was hard to believe that anything more cunning would ever
come to claim the farmer's money. Weird tales of a machine on which two
men rode and bound twelve acres of wheat in ten hours came to us, but
we did not potently believe these reports--on the contrary we accepted
the self-rake as quite the final word in harvesting machinery and
cheerily bent to the binding of sheaves with their own straw in the good
old time-honored way.

No task save that of "cradling" surpassed in severity "binding on a
station." It was a full-grown man's job, but every boy was ambitious to
try his hand, and when at fourteen years of age I was promoted from
"bundle boy" to be one of the five hands to bind after the reaper, I
went to my corner with joy and confidence. For two years I had been
serving as binder on the corners, (to keep the grain out of the way of
the horses) and I knew my job.

I was short and broad-shouldered with large strong hands admirably
adapted for this work, and for the first two hours, easily held my own
with the rest of the crew, but as the morning wore on and the sun grew
hotter, my enthusiasm waned. A painful void developed in my chest. My
breakfast had been ample, but no mere stomachful of food could carry a
growing boy through five hours of desperate toil. Along about a quarter
to ten, I began to scan the field with anxious eye, longing to see
Harriet and the promised luncheon basket.

Just when it seemed that I could endure the strain no longer she came
bearing a jug of cool milk, some cheese and some deliciously fresh
fried-cakes. With keen joy I set a couple of tall sheaves together like
a tent and flung myself down flat on my back in their shadow to devour
my lunch.

Tired as I was, my dim eyes apprehended something of the splendor of the
shining clouds which rolled like storms of snow through the deep-blue
spaces of sky and so, resting silently as a clod I could hear the chirp
of the crickets, the buzzing wings of flies and the faint, fairylike
tread of smaller unseen insects hurrying their way just beneath my ear
in the stubble. Strange green worms, grasshoppers and shining beetles
crept over me as I dozed.

This delicious, dreamful respite was broken by the far-off approaching
purr of the sickle, flicked