In this, however, Ezra was wrong, for within twenty-five years from the time when the first reapers were sold Ezra saw added to the machine two steel arms which, driven by the revolution of the wheels, caught each bundle of grain before it left the platform on which it was collected, whirled a wire tight around it, fastened the two ends together with a twist, cut it loose, and tossed it on the ground. There was then only one complaint made by the farmers. When the grain was fed to cattle they were often injured by pieces of wire. This trouble was remedied later by substituting twine for wire, adding a very ingenious contrivance for knotting the twine, and then the McCormick Reaper and Self-Binder might be said to be perfected. One man alone, to drive the reaper, could then do what, only twenty years before, had required twenty men. Moreover, the harvesting of a bushel of wheat which required under the slow snip, snip of a sickle three hours could be done in ten minutes! Long before Ezra Harding was an old man he saw moving out of the Chicago freight yards a train loaded with nothing but reapers, carrying these machines not only over the United States but even to Russia and China. He saw the wheat crop of this country doubled and trebled and quadrupled; he saw the time when even a poor man could have white bread to eat, because the cost of a loaf had been cut in two; he saw the reaper bring millions and millions of dollars to its inventor; and he saw not only this great wealth come to the man he himself had long admired, but also, while Cyrus McCormick was still in the prime of life, the honor and fame which have been denied many of the great inventors until after death. GRANDMA'S INTRODUCTION TO ELECTRIC CARS In 1891 when Harriet Lewis wrote just before her grandmother's annual visit: "We have something in Portland this year that really will surprise you, Grandma," all the family laughed over her grandmother's answer. "If you mean the electric cars which I have been reading about in the _Press_," so her grandmother's letter ran, "remember that I have already seen street cars running up and down hill in San Francisco without any horses to draw them, and that it won't be any more surprising to see them running all alone in Portland, even if it is electricity this time which makes them go." "Can't astonish Grandma, can we?" said Harriet's father, smiling.