"Look you, simpleton," quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar. "Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don't want to share in the glory of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial of my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and marshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into fields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I repeat, to have this proud thing to tell--in far future days, when poor old I shall have been long dead and gone, boy--to your children and your children's children; in that case, sir, you are free to land forthwith." "Oh, uncle! I did not mean--" "No words, sir! Yorpy, take his oar, and help pull him ashore." "But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that--" "Not a syllable, sir; you have cast open scorn upon the Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus. Yorpy, put him ashore, Yorpy. It's shallow here again. Jump out, Yorpy, and wade with him ashore." "Now, my dear, good, kind uncle, do but pardon me this one time, and I will say nothing about the apparatus." "Say nothing about it! when it is my express end and aim it shall be famous! Put him ashore, Yorpy." "Nay, uncle, I _will_ not give up my oar. I have an oar in this matter, and I mean to keep it. You shall not cheat me out my share of your glory." "Ah, now there--that's sensible. You may stay, youngster. Pull again now." We were all silent for a time, steadily plying our way. At last I ventured to break water once more. "I am glad, dear uncle, you have revealed to me at last the nature and end of your great experiment. It is the effectual draining of swamps; an attempt, dear uncle, in which, if you do but succeed (as I know you will), you will earn the glory denied to a Roman emperor. He tried to drain the Pontine marsh, but failed." "The world has shot ahead the length of its own diameter since then," quoth my uncle, proudly. "If that Roman emperor were here, I'd show him what can be done in the present enlightened age." Seeing my good uncle so far mollified now as to be quite self-complacent, I ventured another remark. "This is a rather severe, hot pull, dear uncle." "Glory is not to be gained, youngster, without pulling hard for it--against the stream, too, as we do now. The natural tendency of man, in the mass, is to go down with the universal current into oblivion." "But why pull so far, dear uncle, upon the present occasion? Why pull ten miles for it? You do but propose, as I understand it, to put to the actual test this admirable invention of yours. And could it not be tested almost anywhere?"