"I presume they did," agreed Mr. Ackerman. "It is very easy to see one's mistakes after a thing is all over. Anyway, Mr. Barlow came back to America, where Fulton joined him, and immediately the latter went to building a steamboat that should be practical. On his way home he had stopped in England and purchased various parts for his engine and when he got to New York he had these set up in an American boat. You must not for a moment imagine that everything about this first steamboat of Fulton's was original. On the contrary he combined what was best in the experiments of previous inventors. He adopted the English type of engine, the side paddle, everything that seemed to him workable. Barlow and a rich New Yorker named Livingston backed the enterprise. Now some time before the State of New York, half in jest and half in irony, had granted to Livingston the sole right to navigate the New York waters by means of ships driven by steam or fire engines. At the time the privilege had caused much mirth for there were nothing but sailing ships in existence, and there was no prospect of there ever being any other kind of vessel. Hence the honor was a very empty one and nobody expected a time would arrive when it would ever be of any value to its owner. But Livingston was a shrewder and more far-seeing man than were the old legislators at Albany, and to Fulton he was an indispensable ally." The boy listened breathlessly. "How these three men managed to keep their secret so well is a mystery; but apparently they did, and when Fulton suddenly appeared on the Hudson with a steamboat named the _Clermont_ for Mr. Livingston's country seat on the Palisades, the public was amazed. A model of the boat with a miniature engine had previously been tried out so the three promoters had little doubt that their project would work, and it did. As the new craft moved along without any sails to propel it the sensation it made was tremendous. People were divided as to whether to flee from it in terror or linger and marvel at it. It is a pity that the newspapers of the period did not take the advent of this remarkable invention more seriously for it would have been interesting to know more of the impression it created. As it was little is recorded about it. Probably the very silence of the press is significant of the fact that there was scant faith in the invention, and that it was considered too visionary a scheme to dignify with any notice. However that may be, the newspapers passed this wonderful event by with almost no comment. History, however, is more generous and several amusing stories have come down to us of the fright the _Clermont_ caused as she crept along the river at dusk with a shower of vermilion sparks rising from her funnel. One man who came around a bend of the stream in his boat and encountered the strange apparition for the first time told his wife afterward that he had met the devil traveling the river in a sawmill."