was, however, a reality, and the little Fire Fly went puffing and
splashing up and down the river, alarming and astonishing the people
along its banks. She could make the voyage from the upper end of the
Tappan Zee to New York in a day, no matter how the wind blew. Hanz
Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody
else. The bright blaze of her furnaces, and the long trail of fire and
sparks issuing from her funnel of a dark night, gave a spectre-like
appearance to her movements, that rather increased a belief amongst the
superstitious that she was really an invention of the evil one, sent for
some bad purpose.

A meeting was called at Hanz Toodleburg's house to consider the
dangerous look of things along the river. The Dominie and the
schoolmaster, and all the wise men in the settlement, were present, and
gave their opinions with the greatest gravity. If this Mr. Fulton, it
was argued, could, with the aid of the evil one, build these steamboats
to go to New York and back in a day, why there was an end to the
business of sloops and barges. And if the honest men who owned these
vessels were thrown out of business, how were they to get bread for
their families? These new inventions, Hanz argued, would be the ruin of
no end of honest people.

The schoolmaster, who assumed great wisdom on all such occasions, and
who had tossed off several pots of beer during the evening, put the
whole matter in a much more encouraging light. He had read something
about steam, he said, and knew that it was a very dangerous thing for a
man to trifle with. Mr. Fulton had built his steamboat one hundred and
nine feet long; and he could get to New York and back in a day, if
nothing happened to his boiler, which was all the time in danger of
bursting. Then if the boiler bursted, very likely the boat and all in
her would go to the bottom. Just let that happen once in the Tappan Zee,
and there would be an end to Mr. Fulton and his invention for getting
people to New York quick. Just let him set the Tappan Zee afire once,
and people would make such a storm that nothing more would be heard of
his inventions. When there was such danger of losing one's life
travelling in this way, what careful farmer, who had a family depending
on him, would think of either going himself or sending his produce to
market in such a way? There was no wisdom in the thing. The people would
stick to the sloops. That was the only safe way for sensible