with the ease and velocity
with which a good skater skims over the ice.

It looked like a splendid thing. Bradley said that it would certainly
produce a revolution in navigation, and make men wholly independent of
steamers and other vessels when they desired to travel upon water with
rapidity. Bradley intimated that the day would come when a man would
mount a water perambulator and go drifting off to India, sliding over
the bounding billows of the dark blue sea as serenely as if he were
walking along a turnpike.

And one day Bradley asked a select party to come down to the river
to see him make a trial-trip. At the appointed time he appeared with
something that looked like a small frigate under each arm; and when he
had fastened them securely upon his feet, he prepared to lower himself
over the edge of the wharf. He asked the spectators to designate a
point upon the thither shore at which they wished him to land. It was
immaterial to him, he said, whether he went one mile or ten, up stream
or down, because he should glide around upon the surface of the stream
with the ease and grace of a swallow. Then they fixed a point for him;
and when he had dropped into the water, he steadied himself for a
moment by holding to the pier while he fastened his eye upon his
destination and prepared to start.

At last he said the experiment would begin; and he struck out with his
left foot. As he did so the front end of that particular scow scuttled
under water, and as he tried to save himself by bringing forward his
right foot, that section of Bradley's Water Perambulator also dipped
under, and Bradley fell.

[Illustration: THE NEW MOTOR]

A moment later he was hanging head downward in the river, with nothing
visible to the anxious spectators but the bottoms of two four-foot
frigates. The perambulator simply kept the body of Bradley under the
water. Then a man went out in a skiff and pulled the inventor in with
a boat-hook. When he came ashore, they unbuckled his scows, took off
his clothing and rolled him upon an oil-barrel. In half an hour he
revived, and with a deep groan he said,

"Where am I?"

His friends explained his situation to him, and then he asked,

"What drowned me?"

They told him sadly that he was injured during an attempt to
revolutionize navigation and to prepare the way for a walk to India.

"How did I try to do it?" he inquired.

They wept as they reminded him that he had started to skim over the
river