One’s sympathy goes unreservedly to Fulton. He was at this time almost forty-one years old. He had fought his battle of life alone, without money, and with only such friends as he had attracted to himself from time to time. He had tried several avenues that might lead to success, but he found that one after the other came to an end in desert fields. To his latest effort he had devoted nine years. It had been the most promising of them all. It had brought him in contact with many powerful people, it had provided action that he sought, it was lighted with the bright hopes for success, and for the past two years had furnished a comfortable living, the first of any of his efforts so to do. But now this avenue like the others had reached an end. This disappointment must have exceeded all his previous disappointments. He had abandoned art, small canal construction and his excavating devices at a time when no one of them offered any great encouragement. In none of his earlier efforts had he attained a good foothold. In his submarine he had buried more time and energy than he had in any of his other lines: in fact, he had spent nearly one half of the years since leaving home in its study. Whatever estimate he had placed on art and his various engineering projects, this time he knew that he was right. There was no doubt in his own mind as to the correctness of his reasoning and the workable qualities of his invention. All the harder it must have been, when he realized that he could not make men see it as he did, other than his two unnamed friends in America and his one friend in England, the Earl of Stanhope.