with a tutor to make up for the work he
missed at the beginning of the year. He has been compelled to bone down
like a beaver to go ahead with his class; but he has succeeded, haven't
you, sonny?"

"I hope I have," was the modest retort.

"Furthermore," went on Mr. Ackerman, "there are other things beside
scholarship to be considered in this bargain. We want fine, manly boys
as well as wise ones. Conduct counts for a great deal, you know."

Stephen felt himself coloring.

"There have been no black marks on Dick's record thus far. How about
yours, Steve?" asked the New York man.

"I--er--no. I haven't had any black marks, either," responded Stephen,
with a gulp of shame.

"That is splendid, isn't it!" commented Mr. Ackerman. "I wasn't looking
for them. You have too fine a father to be anything but a square boy."

Once more Stephen knew himself to be blushing. If they would only talk
about something else!

"Are you going to finish your steamboat story for us while you are
here?" inquired he with sudden inspiration.

"Why, I had not thought of doing any steamboating down here," laughed
the capitalist. "Rather I came to help the Pilgrims celebrate their
first harvest."

"But even they had to come to America by boat," suggested Doris
mischievously.

"I admit that," owned the New Yorker. "And what is more, they probably
would have come in a steamboat if one had been running at the time."

"What was the first American steamship to cross the Atlantic, Ackerman?"
questioned Mr. Tolman when they were all seated before the library fire.

"I suppose the _Savannah_ had that distinction," was the reply. "She was
built in New York in 1818 to be used as a sailing packet; but she had
side wheels and an auxiliary engine, and although she did not make the
entire trans-Atlantic distance by steam she did cover a part of it
under steam power. Her paddle wheels, it is interesting to note, were so
constructed that they could be unshipped and taken aboard when they were
not in use, or when the weather was rough. I believe it took her
twenty-seven days to make the trip from Savannah to Liverpool and eighty
hours of that time she was using her engine. Although she made several
trips in safety it was quite a while before the American public was
sufficiently convinced of the value of steam to build other steamships.
A few small ones appeared in our harbors, it is true, but they came from
Norway or England; they made much better reco