that his boat should make a rate of
eight miles an hour, and the charge for passage should be a shilling.

He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August,
1787, would have witnessed a memorable thing. The Convention for the
framing of a Constitution for the United States of America was in
session. For some time the body had been wearing itself into
exhaustion over this question and that question which seemed
impossible of solution. On the day referred to, the convention, on
invitation, adjourned, and the members, including the Father of his
country, who was President, went down to the water's edge to see a
sight. There Fitch's steamboat was to make its trial trip, and there
the trial trip was made, with entire success.

They who were building the ship of state could but applaud the
performance of the little steamer that sped away toward Burlington.
But the applause was of that kind which the wise and conservative folk
always give to the astonishing thing done by genius. The wise and
conservative folk look on and smile and praise, but do not commit
themselves. Most dangerous it is for a politician to commit himself to
a beneficial enterprise; for the people might oppose it!

The facts here referred to are fully attested in indisputable records.
There are files of Philadelphia newspapers which contain accounts of
Fitch's boat. A line of travel and traffic was established between
Philadelphia and Burlington. There was also a steam ferryboat on the
Delaware. A second boat, called the "Perseverance," was designed for
the waters of the Mississippi; but this craft was wrecked by a storm,
and then the patent under which the Ohio river and its confluent
waters were granted, expired, and the enterprise had to be abandoned.
On the fourth of September, 1790, the following advertisement of the
"Pennsylvania Packet" appeared in a Philadelphia paper:

"The Steamboat will set out this morning, at eleven o'clock, for
Messrs. Gray's Garden, at a quarter of a dollar for each passenger
thither. It will afterwards ply between Gray's and middle ferry, at
11d each passenger. To-morrow morning, Sunday, it will set off for
Burlington at eight o'clock, to return in the afternoon."

This Pennsylvania Packet continued to ply the Delaware for about three
years. The mechanical construction of the boat was not perfect; and
shortly after the date to which the above advertisement refers the
little steamer was ruined by an a