o absurd
that I lose my temper before he gets half way through the first page
of his prospectus. From his boyhood up he has been fond of the water,
and when the bath-tub was first invented we did not have to drive him
to it, as most parents have to do with most boys, but on the contrary
we had all we could do to keep him away from it. I don't think any one
in my household for five hundred years was able to take a bath on any
night of the week without first having to clear away from the tub the
evidence of Noah's interest in marine matters. Nothing in the world
seemed to delight his spirit more as a child than to fill the tub
full of water, turn on the shower at its fullest speed, and play what
he called flood in it, with a shingle or a chip, or if he could not
find either of these, with a floating leaf. Many a time I have found
him long after he was supposed to have gone to bed sitting on the
bath-room floor singing a roysterous nautical song like "Rocked in the
Cradle of the Deep," or "A Life On the Ocean Wave," while he pushed a
floating soap dish filled with ants, spiders and lady-bugs up and down
that overflowing tub; and later in his life, when more manly sports
would seem to be more to any one's tastes, while his playmates were
out in the open chasing the Discosaurus over the hills, or trapping
Pterodactyls in the bull-rushes, he would go off by himself into the
woods where he had erected what he called his ship-yard, and whittle
out gondolas, canoes, battle-ships, arks and other marine craft day
in and day out until one could hardly walk in the dark without
stubbing his toe on some kind of a boat. I recall once coming upon him
on the farther slopes of Mount Ararat, putting the finishing touches
to as graceful a cat-boat as any one ever saw--a thing that would have
excited the envy of mariners in all parts of the world, but in spite
of my admiration for his handicraft, it worried me more than I can say
when I thought of all the labor he had expended on such a work miles
away from any kind of a water course. It did not seem to square with
my ideas as to what constituted sense.

"It is very beautiful, my son," I observed, after inspecting the
vessel carefully for a few moments. "Her lines are perfect, and the
model indicates that she will prove a speedy proposition, but it seems
to me that you have left out one of the most important features of a
permanently successful sailing vessel."

Noah looked at me patronizi