peaker with an air of surprise and
astonishment, while Hanz and the school-master suddenly ceased smoking.

"Now don't get alarmed, my friends," said Titus, watching with evident
delight the increasing alarm of his guests. "It is all here, and true.
He has invented a steam-horse, with an iron stomach and wheels; and the
animal can, with good management, be made to run over a road at the rate
of twenty miles an hour. Yes," added Titus, with a look of great
seriousness, "people are already risking their lives by riding in this
way."

The doctor heaved a sigh, and, half raising his pipe, gave it as his
opinion that a man who would invent such dangerous machines must be in
league with the devil. This profound opinion was endorsed by both Hanz
and the school-master. The latter, in short, suggested that such men
were generally vagabonds, whom it were well to throw into the Tappan
Zee, with stones around their necks.

"If the world was going to the devil in this way, what was the use of
living in it," inquired the school-master, finishing his ale, and
passing his mug for a fresh draught.

"Sure enough, sure enough!" a number of voices ejaculated
simultaneously.

"Truly, the dragons are to be let loose upon us," resumed Bright,
passing the schoolmaster his mug of ale. "An' here's now in New York,
that's got to be so wicked honest folks can't live in it, a lot o' crazy
men talking about building one of these here steamboats big enough to
cross the Atlantic."

"Der won't be much heerd of de mans nir de vomans vat goes in um,"
interrupted Hanz.

"Peoples is not sho crazy as t'too any un de sort. 'Tis all hombug;"
joined the doctor.

"So I say, doctor!" interposed the school-master.

"Here it is, gentlemen," resumed Bright; "all down in the newspaper. No
getting over that." Thus was this important subject discussed until a
late hour, the gossips going to their homes with serious faces and heavy
hearts.

It is a very well established fact that the question of building
steamships large enough and strong enough to cross the ocean was
discussed by a number of New York merchants who were ready to embark
capital in the project, several years before the keels of the Royal
William, the Savannah, the Sirius, or the Great Western were laid. But
we must leave this subject for the present, and return to our friends,
the Chapmans.

These people professed to be plain and practical, brought up according
to the creed of New England