Reaper

“ And even as they shrieked the Black Reaper paused, and, putting away his scythe, stooped and gathered up a sheaf in his arms and stood it on end. And, with the very act, a man—one that had been forward in yesterday's business—fell down amongst us yelling and foaming; and he rent his breast in his frenzy, revealing the purple blot thereon, and he passed blaspheming. And the reaper stooped and stooped again, and with every sheaf he gathered together one of us fell stricken and rolled in his agony, while the rest stood by palsied. ”

“ From all sides comes the sound of the reaper, a rattle when horse-drawn, but a scream when petrol drives it, a restless disagreeable noise, not only anti-social, but unsociable. I regret the happy accidents of the vanished harvests: the reapers with their attendant girls binding after them, the busy, thirsty, brawling Irishmen; the sharp swish of the scythe which succeeded the hook and was always a pleasant sound, whether as it slashed down the straw, or when the stone tinkled rhythmically against the blade ”

“ Unable to speak any language but their own, unused to pomp and pageantry, breezily independent in the American fashion, the Reaper Kings plunged from adventure to adventure, absolutely indifferent to everything but their reapers and success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Laying of the Colossus Back and forth, in an irregular, drunken, zigzag course, from end to end and side to side of the harried realm, the giant strode without pause, like an energumen possessed by some implacable fiend of mischief and murder, leaving behind him, as a reaper leaves his swath, an ever-lengthening zone of havoc, of rapine and carnage. ”

“ But if a reaper gets pains in his back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear. The reason for this seems to be that the pains in the back, being inflicted by the corn-spirit, can also be healed by it. Similarly, we saw that elsewhere, when a reaper is wounded at reaping, a cat, as the representative of the corn-spirit, is made to lick the wound. Esthonian reapers of the island of Mon think that the man who cuts the first ears of corn at harvest will get pains in his back, probably because the corn-spirit is believed to resent especially the first wound ”

“ As thee I grasp with willing hand, and feel a reaper's glee,
When, waving in the rustling breeze, the ripen'd field I see;
Or listen to the harmless jest, the bandsman's cheerful song,
The hearty laugh, the rustic mirth, while mingling 'mid the throng;
With joy I see the well-fill'd sheaf, and mark each rising stook,
As thee I ply with agile arm, my trusty Reaping Hook!
They tell of glorious battle-fields, strew'd thick with heaps of slain!
Alas! the triumphs of the sword bring only grief and pain ”

“ Now the reaper rested on his scythe, as if unexpectedly acquitted of a part of his labour; but the corn flamed up in these five or six directions, and was consumed in each to the compass of a single sheaf: whereat the fire died away. And with its dying the faces of those that had ventured went black as coal; and they flung up their arms, screaming, and fell prone where they stood, and were hidden from our view.
Then, indeed, despair seized upon all of us that survived, and we made no doubt but that we were to be exterminated and wiped from the earth for our sins, as were the men of Anathoth. ”

“ The reapers were plying their glittering steel, and gathering the falling grain into sheaves. The sound of rustic music came upon his ears as he rode along through the fields. It was the song of the reapers. He approached them. They were his own hired servants. Though they were poor, and had to toil for their daily bread, their wealthy employer did not despise them. He was one who feared the Lord, and saw in every human form a brother. Kind were his words as he approached the reapers, and full of pious sentiment—for his salutation was, The Lord be with you. ”

“ The late James Oliver, and David Bradley, one of his greatest competitors, were born and bred near the furrowed soil.
McCormick built his first reaper in a blacksmith shop on a farm. So did John F. Sieberling, William N. Whiteley, Lewis Miller and C. W. Marsh. And the man who owned the first of the reaper factories, Dayton S. Morgan, grew up amid the stumps of a New York farm.
The American Farmer has always grown ideas, as well as corn and potatoes. That is the secret of his prosperity. It was out in the wheat-fields where the idea of a self-binder flashed upon the brain of John F. Appleby ”

“ So about the year 1800 inventors in Europe and in America took up the task of inventing a new kind of reaper. The first attempts were made in England where population was increasing very fast and where large quantities of grain were needed to feed the people. The first hints for a reaper were from a machine which was used in Gaul nearly 2,000 years ago. ”

“ Following after they bring a wage of meat,
To the strong reapers toiling on the southern hill,
Whose feet are burned by the hot earth they tread,
Whose backs are scorched by flames of the shining sky. ”

“ They did not stand for hours, with the blackness of the night around them, listening to the roar of the volcano’s eruption and hear their death knell sounded long before they were compelled to undergo the actual pain of an awful death; they were caught as they sought safety in flight and stricken down while endeavoring to get beyond the reach of the sickle of the grim reaper; they could move and act in accordance with their impulses which prompted them to make a flight for life, and they succumbed only after a desperate struggle. ”

“ The reapers are the angels of God, who are his servants: for as every lord or master has his servants to wait upon him, and to do his commandments, so the angels of God wait upon Him to do his commandments. The angels at the time of the harvest shall gather first all such as have been evil and [pg 027] have given occasion of wickedness, and go forward in the same without repentance or amendment of their lives. All such, I say, shall be gathered together and cast into the furnace of fire, “where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ”

“ Quit ploughs and scythes, the reapers too let fall
Their sickles, and the shepherds instantly
Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!'"
Then the scythes rested and the ploughs were stayed,
The forty highland reapers each his blade
Let tall, and rushed as bees on new-found wings
Forsake the hive, begin their wanderings,
And, by the din of clanging cymbals led,
Gather them to a pine. So also fled
The laborers one and all; the waggoners,
And they who tended them ”

“ If any portion of the field remains unreaped at nightfall, the reapers make loops in the leaves of some of the standing stalks to prevent the evil spirits from proceeding with the harvest during the hours of darkness, or, according to another account, lest the Rice-goddess should go astray. ”

“ Then the reapers gather home, and they bear upon their spears, One whose face is like the moon, fallen gray among the spheres, With the daylight's curse upon it, as the sun sinks low. Faint as far-off bugles blowing, soft and low the reapers sung;— O, happy are the apples when the south winds blow! Sweet as summer in the blood, when the heart is ripe and young, Love is sweetest in the dying, like the sheaves he lies among, In the happy harvest-fields as the sun sinks low. William Wallace Harney [1831-1912]
FACE TO FACE If my face could only promise that its color would remain ”

“ He will not touch the little children! Bring them and set them in his path!" And so crying I sped to the neck of meadow, and loosened the soft arms from my throat, and put the little one down within the corn.
Now at once the women saw what I would be at, and full a score of them snatched up their babes and followed me. And here we were reckless for ourselves; but we knelt the innocents in one close line across the neck of land, so that the Black Reaper should not find space between any of them to swing his scythe. ”

“ A form of scythe used for harvesting grain before the reaper came into use, or used in places where the reaper proved uneconomical or technologically inappropriate, as rough or hilly land. This specimen has four wooden fingers, or tines, that are 45 inches long and spaced 7 inches apart. The blade is 2 inches wide and as long as the fingers. Gift of New York Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.
131. Self-Rake Reaper, 1895. USNM 213356; 1958. A McCormick Daisy Reaper of 1895 in which the operator sat on a seat mounted on the axle of the left wheel. Two horses drew the reaper. ”

“ The shooting party reached the spot just at the time that the reapers were having their dinner and taking their midday rest, and one of the reapers had laid his scythe against a little stack of wood about three feet high, At this moment a snipe got up, and M. Dumas fired and killed it. ”

“ But the reapers sing not in thy wheatfields:
Tall sheaves wait ungarnered,
Though swallows are shrilling in the skies.
[Pg 19] We are reaped, who were thy reapers, and slain our songs;
We are torn as Iason, beloved of thee, Mother:
Heavy the clay upon our lips,
The gray rats fear us not, but pass quickly, sated,
Over prone trunks, rent limbs, dead faces,
That are ashen under the moon.
Love, who begat us, shall Love slay us utterly?
Shall we not mingle with earth, as with sleep,
Dream into grasses, leafage, flowers,
Such being our very flesh ”

“ We will wake up the dry bones of these old countries, and civilise and Christianise them with our farm machinery.”
C. W. Marsh, inventor of the Marsh Harvester, made a sensational début in Hungary in 1870. Several grand dukes had arranged for a great contest of the various sorts of reapers on one of the royal farms in Hungary, so that the Minister of Agriculture might take notice. When the day arrived, there were nine reapers at the farm, mostly of European design.
Marsh’s strange-looking machine seemed to be a combination of reaper and workbench. ”

“ Electricity seems to kill by destroying nervous power. Cardanus tells of eight reapers being killed while taking their meal under an oak. When the witnesses of the occurrence ran to the spot, they saw a strange sight. ”

“ They are reapers who go weeping in the midst of a barren and dying world, who shall one day come with joy, bringing their sheaves with them. [22] But these titles, though expressive, are ideal and pictorial. There are others more homely and lying closer to our life and needs. ”

“ The International has competitors, too—very active and able ones. Binders are made by 4 large independent companies, mowers by 17, corn-shredders by 18, twine by 26, wagons by 116, and gasolene engines by 124. Of the thirty-seven different machines made by the International there are only three—hemp-reapers, corn-shockers, and rice-binders—that are made by no other company, and even these machines are not protected by any basic patents. Powerful as the International is, it is still far from the place where business is one long sweet dream of monopoly. ”

“ This lengthy message, telegraphed to my stunned brain, caused me to wonder what sort of beings these creatures were, from where they had come and what was their mission here. Certainly, the owl-eyed freak talked like a military lord. I began to feel that I was the proverbial mouse and the cat was merely playing with me for his own amusement. The strange power the High Chief had displayed in striking Sands to the floor, awed me considerably. Of a certainty, we men on earth boasted of no such strange weapons that shot pencil-thin light rays and killed instantly and silently. ”

“ He could almost see the quiver of a sinuous body about to strike. It seemed he could feel the pair of jet black, glistening eyes glaring into his own. He could imagine deadly fangs fastened into his cheek. If he only dared draw his gun and blow off the reptile's head. That would bring more enemies more deadly about him. If only the men above would leave before some inadvertent movement drew that attack.
Then stark terror took him. Now the reptile breathed twin jets of fire. Now it grinned at him in hideous fashion. Again it grew—and grew—until it almost crowded him from the cellar. ”

“ For as a taper, while yet burning, affords a pleasant, harmless light, but is noisome and offensive when extinguished, so those heroes shine benignly on us and do us good, but at their death turn all things topsy-turvy, raise up tempests, and infect the air with pestilential vapors. ”

“ A fiendish yell burst from the maniac. Suddenly a great serpent was thrown upward from the pit. Petrified with horror, the watchers saw its thick, writhing form fly through the air and light on the witch-doctress’s shoulder. With a shrill laugh the hag merely seized the wriggling, squirming reptile, which, with crest waving, was hissing like a fury, and hurled it back into the pit again. What sort of devil’s influence was protecting these people, that they could handle the most deadly reptiles with absolute impunity? ”

“ It is the place of skulls, where Death holds his carnival in companionship with worms, and hell laughs in the face of heaven. Dark storms are gathering there—convolving clouds, charged with no common wrath. Terrors set themselves in battle-array before the Son of God; and tempests burst upon Him which might sweep all mankind in a moment to eternal ruin. Hark! hear ye not the subterranean thunder? Feel ye not the tremor of the mountain? It is the shock of Satan’s artillery, playing upon the Captain of our Salvation. ”

“ And so neither are they who stand near the crater struck and moved by the light wind, when the purified hand of the priest brandishes the sacred torches; yet it strikes their faces, and bodies set in motion invade our bodies: in so slight an instance there is a cause which repels force. The air in its complete calm draws up no cinder or light stubble, stirs no parched grass or thin bits of chaff. ”