That he immediately built a steam carriage in pursuance of this authority is doubtful. The only authentic record of an attempt is of one that he constructed in Philadelphia seven years later and under peculiar circumstances. It is likely that his act in securing the Maryland patent was done on the spur of a determination to build an automobile, but it was not immediately carried out. He went on perfecting steam engines up to 1804, when he accepted an order from the city of Philadelphia to build a steam flat boat for dock work. His mind appears to have then reverted back to the time seven years before when he contemplated applying an engine to a road vehicle and got the Maryland patent for that purpose, for, after building the steam flatboat and installing a 5-horse power engine on it, he announced his intention of mounting the flatboat on a wagon, on which he proposed to drive the boat about Philadelphia. A horseless carriage, no doubt, had been a hobby with him for years, and he saw in the steam driven wagon, carrying a steam driven flatboat, an ocular demonstration of the practicability of the horseless carriage. The four wheels of the wagon he built were connected by belts and gearing with the engine on the boat, and the vehicle was driven up Market Street by steam, bearing the flatboat and its engine in triumph. It circled the squares on which the City Hall and the statue of William Penn now stand, and proceeded to the Schuylkill river. Here flatboat and wagon were separated, and the former launched on the river. A paddle wheel was affixed to the stern and connected with the engine. The boat ran as well as the wagon had done. It steamed down to the Delaware river and all the way to Trenton. The wagon, divorced of engine and gearing, became only a wagon again, and whatever became of it, history does not say. The skepticism, the derogatory observations, the pessimistic prophecies and the contemptuous disapproval of the many persons witnessing the Evans’ pilgrim’s progress up Market Street aroused the inventor’s ire. Had he but been philosophical, he would have appreciated that such has been the fate and greeting of all inventions. But Evans was choleric. When a citizen said his wagon was only what might now be dubbed a “flivver”—that it would never run over five miles an hour, and other things that the minds of the unimaginative conceive of innovations, the inventor drew from his wallet $3,000 that the city of Philadelphia had just paid him for his steamboat, and said the carping critic could transfer the “roll” to his own pocket, if he could produce a horse that would run faster for five miles than a steam wagon that Evans would build. The size of the roll was too much for the pessimist, and he betook himself and his criticisms off.