But one conscientious thirteen-year-old boy tried to think of some other method to show patriotism. As the town council forbade the use of candles, he would not disobey their law; perhaps he could prepare a more novel celebration in honor of the holiday. He had some candles which he had saved for the event; now they were of no use. He therefore took them to a brush-maker who kept powder and shot for sale, and offered to trade them for gunpowder. The brush-maker, surprised that the boy would part with his candles when they were so scarce, asked his reason. The lad replied: “Our rulers have asked the people not to illuminate their windows and streets. All good citizens should obey law, so I have decided instead to light the heavens with sky-rockets.” The dealer, although amused, was glad to get the candles and promptly gave gunpowder in exchange. Then the boy went to another store, where he bought several large sheets of cardboard. The clerk was about to roll the sheets for easy handling, but his customer protested: “I wish to carry them as they are.” The curiosity of this man also was aroused. He remembered that the lad was said to be “always trying to invent something.” As he handed them over he asked: “What are you going to do with them?” Eagerly the boy answered: “We are forbidden to light our windows with candles. I’m going to shoot my candles through the air.” “Tut! Tut!” exclaimed the man, laughingly. “That’s an impossibility.” “No, sir,” the boy responded, with a flash of enthusiasm. “There is nothing impossible.” This is a true story, told by an old-time Lancaster historian. The thirteen-year-old boy was Robert Fulton, who became the inventor of steam navigation. It is good to carry the story further in imagination. That group of boys who gathered in the town during the twilight of Independence Day, 1778, saw a few spluttering rockets shoot skyward from the hand of a lad determined to carry the good news of freedom to a higher horizon than that of the home windows of Lancaster. A flash! A whirr! and the light arose, zigzagged its message through the darkness, like fiery handwriting in the sky, and then died away. But the fine courage and courtesy of the boy who would not disobey a local law, although he felt a national appeal to patriotic jubilee,—these tokens of character have not faded. They prophesied the boy’s success in life. He foretold it in his words, “Nothing is impossible.”