ulton, Miniature Painter." But now,
after nearly ten years, he was painting a panorama in France. While
thus engaged, the American consul at L'Orient showed to Fulton Fitch's
drawings and specifications for a steamboat. More than this, _he
loaned them to him, and he kept them for several months_.

A thrifty man was Robert Fulton; discerning, prudent and capable!
Meanwhile, poor Fitch, in 1794, returned to America. On the ship he
worked his way as one of the hands. Getting again to New York he
determined to make his way into that region of country where he had
been a surveyor in 1780. He accordingly set out from New York for
Kentucky, but not till he had invented, or rather constructed, a
steamboat, which was driven by _a screw propeller_! This, in 1796, he
launched on the Collect Pond, in what is now Lower New York. The boat
was successful as an experiment; but the people who saw it looked upon
its operation and upon the thing itself as the product of a crazy
man's brain.

He who now passes along the streets of the metropolis will come upon a
vendor of toys, who will drop upon the pavement an artificial
miniature tortoise, rabbit, rat, or what not, well wound up; and the
creature will begin to crawl, or dance, or jump, or run, according to
its nature. The busy, conservative man smiles a superior smile, and
passes on. It was in such mood that the old New Yorker of 1796
witnessed the going of Fitch's little screw propeller on the Pond. It
was a toy of the water.

After this the poor spectre left for the West. The spring of 1798
found him at Bardstown, with the model of a little three-foot
steamboat, which he launched on a neighboring stream. There he still
told his neighbors that the time would come when all rivers and seas
would be thus navigated. But they heeded not. The spectre became more
spectral. At last, about the beginning of July, in the year just
named, he gave up the battle, crept into his room at the little old
tavern, took his poison, and fell into the final sleep.

We shall conclude this sketch of him and his work with one of his own
sorrowful prophecies: "The day will come," said he in a letter, "when
some more powerful man will get fame and riches from _my_ invention;
but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of
attention." Than this there is, we think, hardly a more pathetic
passage in the history of the sons of men!

TELEGRAPHING BEFORE MORSE.

There is a great fallacy