a success. They nicknamed him "Toot,"
because every evening, in his room, he was running a tiny model of a
steam-engine across his work table, which gave shrill whistles now and
then.

For as much as thirty years men in Europe and America had been trying to
make vessels run by steam when Fulton finally succeeded in doing it. He
built a boat which was fitted with a steam-engine and gave it a trial on
the river Seine. Something broke, which let the vessel down on to the
river's bottom, but Fulton soon had another puffing its way up and down
a section of the Seine, while the people on the banks cheered and
wondered.

Fulton returned to America and built a steamer which he intended to run
on the Hudson River. He named it the _Clermont_, but it was generally
spoken of as "Fulton's Folly" by the crowds who watched its building.
The loungers who stood about jeering at the inventor were so
disrespectful as they watched the last few days' work that Fulton feared
they would smash it in pieces and hired a guard to protect it.

It was four years after Fulton had shown the model boat on the Seine, in
France, that he started the _Clermont_ up the Hudson River, in his own
country. There were not thirty people in New York city who believed the
steamer would go a mile in an hour. A few friends went aboard with the
inventor, to make the trial trip, but they looked frightened and
worried. The _Clermont_ was a clumsy affair; its machinery creaked and
groaned; no whistle seemed to work, so a horn was blown whenever the
boat approached a landing. The crew carried on enough wood at each
landing to last till they reached another. This wood was pine, and
whenever the engineer stirred the coals, a lot of sparks flew into the
air, and black smoke poured from the funnel. The crews on the ordinary
sailing vessels were afraid of this strange craft that went chugging by
them, and some of the sailors were in such a panic that they left their
vessels and ran into the woods, declaring there was a horrible monster
afloat on the water.

Well, the _Clermont_ proved a great convenience on the Hudson River. It
ran as a packet boat for years, and Fulton built other steamers. He
realized that it would mean a great deal to America if some quick, cheap
method of carrying people and freight along the great Missouri and
Mississippi rivers could be used. His invention of the steamboat has
given him the name of the "Father of Steam Navigation," and it has been