"But all this is of the last century. It was as soon as they were thrown on their own resources that they began to invent. Eli Whitney, a Worcester County boy, graduated at Yale College in 1791. He went to Georgia at once, to be a tutor in a planter's family; but before he arrived, the planter had another tutor. This was a fortunate chance for the world; for poor Whitney, disappointed, went to spend the winter at the house of Mrs. General Greene. One day, at dinner, some guests of hers said that cotton could never be exported with profit unless a machine could be made to separate the seeds from the 'wool.' 'If you want anything invented,' said Mrs. Greene, 'ask my young friend Mr. Whitney; he will invent anything for you.' Whitney had then never seen cotton unmanufactured. But he went to work; and before he was one year out of college, he had invented the cotton-gin, which created an enormous product of cotton, and, in fact, changed the direction of the commerce of the world. "Well, you know about other inventions. Robert Fulton, who built the first effective steamboat, was born in Pennsylvania the same year Whitney was born in Massachusetts. "Hector, you are fond of imaginary conversations: write one in which Whitney and Fulton meet, when each is twenty-one; let Daniel Boone look in on them, and prophesy to them the future of the country, and how much it is to owe to them and to theirs." "I think Blanche had better write it--in a ballad," said Hector, laughing. "It shall be an old crone spinning; and as she turns her wheel she shall describe the Ætna Factory at Watertown." "There shall be a _refrain_," said Wallace,-- "'Turn my wheel gayly; Spin, flax, spin.'" "No," said Hatty; "the refrain shall be 'Four per cent in six months, Eight per cent in twelve.' We are to go to Europe if the Vesuvius Mills pay a dividend. But if they _pass_, I believe I am to scrub floors in my vacation." "Very well," said Uncle Fritz, recalling them to the subject they had started on. "All this is enough to show you how it is that you, who are all New Englanders, are no longer seafaring boys or girls, exclusively or even principally. Your great-grandmother, Alice, saved the lives of all the crew of a Bristol trader, by going out in her father's boat and taking her through the crooked passage between the Brewsters. You would be glad to do it, but I am afraid you cannot." "I should rather encourage those who go to do it," said Alice, demurely, repeating one of their familiar jokes. "And your great-grandfather, Seth, is the Hunt who discovered Hunt's Reef in the Philippines. I am afraid you cannot place it on the map." "I know I cannot," said Seth, bravely. "No," said the old gentleman. "But all the same the reef is there. I came to an anchor in the 'Calypso,' waiting for a southwest wind, in sight of the breakers over it. And I wish we had the pineapples the black people sold us there.