At such a reception to his cherished machine, Withington lost heart. He was a gentle, sensitive man, easily rebuffed, and so, when McCormick aroused from his nap, Withington had departed and was on his way back to Wisconsin. For a few seconds McCormick was uncertain as to whether his visitor had been a reality or a dream. Then he awoke with a start into instant action. A great opportunity had come to him and he had let it slip. He was at this time making self-rake Reapers and Marsh Harvesters; but what he wanted--what every Reaper manufacturer wanted in 1874--was a self-binder. He at once called to him one of his trusted workmen. "I want you to go to Janesville," he said. "Find a man named Withington, and bring him to me by the first train that comes back to Chicago." The next day Withington was brought back and treated with the utmost courtesy. McCormick studied his invention and found it to be a most remarkable mechanism. Two steel arms caught each bundle of grain, whirled a wire tightly around it, fastened the two ends together with a twist, cut it loose and tossed it to the ground. This self-binder was perfect in all its details--as neat and effective a machine as could be imagined. McCormick was delighted. At last, here was a machine that would abolish the binding of grain by hand. A bargain was made with Withington on the spot; and the following July a self-binder was tried on the Sherwood farm, near Elgin, Illinois. It cut fifty acres of wheat and bound every bundle without a slip. From this time onwards no one was needed but a man, a boy, a girl, anybody, who could hold the reins and drive a team of horses. Of the ten or twelve sweating drudges who toiled in the harvest-field, all were now to be set free--the sicklers, cradlers, rakers, binders--every one except the driver, and he (or she) was to have the glory of riding on the triumphal chariot of a machine that did all the work itself. "There were ten men working in my wheat-field in the old days," said an Illinois farmer. "But to-day our hired girl climbs upon the spring seat of a self-binder and does the whole business." McCormick was not the first to make one of these magical machines. There was an able and enterprising manufacturer in New York State, Walter A. Wood, who in 1873 had made three Withington binders, under the supervision of Sylvanus D. Locke, who had been a co-worker with Withington. McCormick had given Wood his start, as early as 1853, by selling him a license to make Reapers; and Wood, by his high personal qualities, had built up a most extensive business. But McCormick was the first to make self-binders upon a large scale. He made 50,000 of the Withington machines, and pushed them with irresistible energy. [Illustration: THE FIRST McCORMICK SELF-RAKE REAPING MACHINE]