A day or two after its arrival (referring to Fortune’s wagon) Mr. Root says that it was arranged that the steam wagon should make a trial trip on the Fourth of July. The monster was accordingly fired up on the eighty-fourth National anniversary and started by an engineer named Callahan. The wagon was ornamented with a number of flags and loaded with a crowd of anxious men and boys. When everything was in readiness the valve was opened and the wagon moved off in a southerly direction from the levee. It went all right until it reached the foot of Commercial street, about a square away. The pilot failing to turn the machine, it kept on straight up to the sidewalk and ran into A. S. Parker’s warehouse, which stood so many years by the old historic cottonwood tree at the southeast corner of Commercial street and the levee. The result of this awkward blunder was an accident, in which a son of the owner of the wagon had an arm broken, as the machine crashed into the side of the building, which was a long, one-story frame cottonwood structure that for a number of years was a noted landmark in Atchison. The excited engineer was at once let out and Lewis Higby, another engineer, and a natural genius, was sent for. Higby mounted the wagon and took his place at the engine, backed the machine out into the middle of the road and in a few minutes went sailing gracefully along west on Commercial street at about six miles per hour. When in front of Jesse Crall’s stable at the corner of Sixth street, before that part of Commercial street had been graded, it went down a little hill at a lively speed, but Higby kept it going and did not stop until it reached L. C. Challiss’ addition, just south and west from Commercial and Eighth streets, near Morgan Willard’s old foundry, built in 1859, away from the business and residence portion of the city.