“Indade, I do.  Would you like to see the greatest lunatic out of Bedlam?  Then it’s mesilf as will point him out to yez.”

“I should like to see him.”

There were a number of men at work on the boat, all expressing the wildest eagerness and anxiety.  They were rushing forward and aft, above and below, to those ponderous engines and boilers; but no one could see what they did.  At last Mr. Fulton, the great inventor, appeared.  He was a large, smooth-shaved gentleman, with a long head and melancholy gray eye.  On his nose was a smut spot from the machinery.  Thousands were now assembled to witness the trial voyage.  Mr. Livingston gave the order to cast off, and start the vessel.  The lines were loosed and the steam turned on.  Loud hissed the confined monster; but the wheels did not move.  What was the matter?

“Failure!” was on every tongue, and the crowd assembled already began to hoot and jeer.  Mr. Fulton’s face expressed the deepest anxiety.  He ran below to inspect the machinery.  A bolt had caught.  This was removed, and then the ponderous wheels began to move.  The great paddles churned the water to a mass of foam, and the boat glided forward against wind and tide at a rate of speed astonishing.  Fernando saw Robert Livingston standing in the stern waving his handkerchief at the crowd which was now sending up cheer after cheer.  The American flag was run up on the staff, and the steamboat continued on her course up the river to Albany, making the distance of one hundred and sixty miles in thirty-six hours against wind and tide; and from that time until now, navigation by steam, travel and commerce, has been steadily increasing in volume and perfection, until such vessels may be seen on every ocean and in almost every harbor of the globe, even among the ice packs of the polar seas.  This was the second of the great and beneficent achievements which distinguished American inventors at that early period of our country’s struggles.  The cotton-gin, invented by Eli Whitney, was the first; an implement that could do the work of a thousand persons in cleaning cotton wool of the seeds.  That machine has been one of the most important aids in the accumulation of our national wealth.

[Illustration]

Fernando Stevens stood on the wharf among the assembled thousands, watching the steamer until it disappeared far up the river.  He was lost in wonder and amazement and was first aroused from his reverie by the young man at his side saying: 

“Don’t she bate the divil?”

It was his skeptical Irish friend.

Fernando turned to him and asked, “What do you think of it now?”

“Faith, she’s a bird, so she is.  Don’t she cleave the water?”