, while he was living in Cincinnati,
constructing a machine to mould candles, a friend said to him:

"Hussey, why don't you invent a machine to reap grain?"

"Are there no such machines?" he asked in surprise.

"No," said his friend, "and whoever can invent one will make a fortune."

Hussey forsook his candle machine, set to work upon a reaper, and within a
year had one in the fields. Then came a twenty-five-year war with
McCormick, which was waged furiously in the Patent Office, the courts, and
a hundred wheat-fields. Hussey won the opening battle by arriving first at
the Patent Office, although his machine, as claimed by McCormick, was two
years younger. By 1841 Hussey had sold reapers in five states, and ten
years later he shared the honours with McCormick at the London World's
Fair.

Both machines were very crude and unsatisfactory. Hussey's had a better
cutting apparatus and McCormicks was more complete. In the long run, each
adopted the devices of the other, and a better reaper was evolved. Before
many years, it became apparent that Hussey was outclassed. By 1858 he was
left so far behind that he lost his interest in reapers and invented a
steam-plough.

His first machine was "really a mower," says Merritt Finley Miller, one of
the two professors who have written on harvesting machinery. It lacked the
master-wheel, the reel and the divider, without which the grain cannot be
rightly handled. When Hussey gave up the contest, his invention was bought
for $200,000 by William F. Ketchum and others, who adapted it into a
mowing-machine.

"Hussey was a very peculiar man," said Ralph Emerson. "His machine was
fairly good, but it was a failure in the market, because he would not put
on a reel. He refused to do this, saying he did not invent a reel, and it
would be a falsehood if he put one on. He said that it was contrary to his
principles to sell anything that he had not invented.

"On one occasion I went to buy a shop licence from him. 'Have you a
thousand dollars in your pocket?' he asked. 'No,' said I. 'Can you get me
three thousand dollars by daylight to-morrow morning?' 'No,' I answered,
'but I can get it by noon.' 'Well,' said Hussey, 'I want to be very
reasonable with you. If you'll pay me one thousand dollars before you
leave the house, or twenty-five hundred dollars before daybreak to-morrow,
I'll sell you a licence. Otherwise, it will cost you twelve thousand
dollars.'

"Several days later I paid him t