Plenty of people laughed at the enterprise and few thought it would amount to anything. Idle-minded men crowded near the ship-yards and gave their reasons for predicting the certain failure of _Fulton’s Folly_, as they called the boat. This was unpleasant but Fulton took no notice of them for he had long before realized that only wise people can grasp new ideas. His patience was inexhaustible and his temper undisturbed. He declined to listen to the jeers of the bystanders who often rudely intended their remarks to reach his ears. And day by day the boat advanced toward completion. It will be remembered that Livingston, by the terms of contract, could not be called upon for more money; we can fancy then how great was Fulton’s anxiety when he found that the boat would cost more than he had surmised. It is said that when one thousand dollars were needed to pay the men, Fulton vainly spent an entire evening trying to persuade an intimate friend to lend the money. Nothing daunted, he renewed his entreaties the following day, and finally the friend reluctantly promised a hundred dollars if Fulton could persuade nine others to subscribe the same sum. This he did by promising the subscribers that their names should be kept secret, as they feared ridicule. [Illustration: FULTON MEDAL. Struck after the inventor’s death in 1815. _Courtesy of the Century Company._] The lack of money was exasperating when Fulton felt so sure of his plan, but not an angry or fretful word escaped him; and when work went wrong, as it sometimes did, he commenced again with the same ardor and calmness. Hot weather came on and still Fulton worked hard at the yards, superintending every detail; he must often have been exhausted, says Colden, his biographer, but he never complained. He showed himself a moral as well as a mechanical philosopher. We always think of Fulton’s steamboat as voyaging first upon the waters of the Hudson; it is interesting therefore to learn from a letter Fulton wrote to Chancellor Livingston, that the boat was launched in the East River, and there made a successful trial-trip on the 9th of August, 1807, exactly four years after Fulton’s demonstration of his French boat on the river Seine. He probably chose the date in remembrance of that never-to-be-forgotten triumph. The Chancellor was spending the summer at Clermont, his famous country estate on the Hudson River at Tivoli, a short distance below the city of Hudson. His delight must have been great when he received the following letter from his energetic partner. I quote it in full because of its special interest in showing how fully Fulton tested his new craft and how personal was his care and exercise of her movements: NEW YORK, Monday the 10th August, 1807. DEAR SIR: