offered, and he bought for twenty-five dollars a
large old wood boat, which was simply a square barge forty feet long
and fifteen feet wide, with bevelled bow and stern, made to hold cord
wood for the steamboats. With his own hands he laid a stout deck
on this, and, with the assistance of a man whom he hired for that
purpose, he constructed a pair of paddle wheels. By that time Joe was
out of money, and work on the boat was suspended for awhile. When
he had accumulated a little more money, he bought a horse power, and
placed it in the middle of his boat, connecting it with the shaft of
his wheels. Then he made a rudder and helm, and his horse-boat was
ready for use. It had cost him about a hundred dollars besides his own
labor upon it, but it would carry live stock and freight as well as
passengers, and so the business of the ferry rapidly increased, and
Joe began to put a little money away in the bank.

After awhile a railroad was built into the village, and then a second
one came. A year later another railroad was opened on the other side
of the river, and all the passengers who came to one village by rail
had to be ferried across the river in order to continue their journey
by the railroads there. The horse-boat was too small and too slow for
the business, and Joe Lambert had to buy two steam ferry-boats to take
its place. These cost more money than he had, but, as the owner of
the ferry privilege, his credit was good, and the boats soon paid for
themselves, while Joe's bank account grew again.

Finally the railroad people determined to run through cars for
passengers and freight, and to carry them across the river on large
boats built for that purpose; but before they gave their orders
to their boat builders, they were waited upon by the attorneys of
Joe Lambert, who soon convinced them that his ferry privilege gave
him alone the right to run any kind of ferry-boats between the two
villages which had now grown to such size that they called themselves
cities. The result was that the railroads made a contract with Joe to
carry their cars across, and he had some large boats built for that
purpose.

All this occurred a good many years ago, and Joe Lambert is not called
Joe now, but Captain Lambert. He is one of the most prosperous men in
the little river city, and owns many large river steamers besides his
ferry-boats. Nobody is readier than he to help a poor boy or a poor
man; but he has his own way of doing it. He