The sewing machine has for its objective result only the simple and insignificant function of fastening one piece of fabric to another, but its influence upon civilization in ministering to the wants of the race has been so great as to cause it to be numbered with the epoch-making inventions of the age. It has created new industries. It has given useful employment to capital, has extended the lists of the wage earner, and increased his daily pay. It has clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and warded off the ravages of cold and death; but, best of all its tuneful accompaniment has lightened the heart and smoothed the pathway of life for Hood’s weary working woman, to whose tired fingers and aching eyes it has brought the balm of much-needed rest. CHAPTER XVI. THE REAPER. EARLY ENGLISH MACHINES--MACHINE OF PATRICK BELL--THE HUSSEY REAPER--MCCORMICK’S REAPER AND ITS GREAT SUCCESS--RIVALRY BETWEEN THE TWO AMERICAN REAPERS--SELF RAKERS--AUTOMATIC BINDERS--COMBINED STEAM REAPER AND THRESHING MACHINE--GREAT WHEAT FIELDS OF THE WEST--STATISTICS. In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty reaper is depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his back to the grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more than thirty centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Even to the present time the scythe, with its cradle of wooden fingers, is occasionally met with, and it is to the older generation a familiar suggestion of the sweat, toil, bustle and excitement of the old harvest time. But all this has been changed by the advent of the reaper, and ere long the grain cradle will hang on the walls of the museum as an ethnological specimen only. The first reaper of which we find historical evidence is that described by Pliny in the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 70). He says: “The mode of getting in the harvest varies considerably. In the vast domains of the province of Gaul a large hollow frame, armed with comb-like teeth, and supported on two wheels, is driven through the standing grain, the beasts being yoked behind it (in contrarium juncto), the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame.” This crude machine has in late years been many times re-invented, and it finds a special application to-day for the gathering of clover seeds, and is called a “header.”