Patty’s mother had been caught in the new craze for “Temperance” and she called the Croton water as much of a godsend as the floods that gushed out from the rock that Moses smote. Since the city had removed the old pumps there had been no place for a man to quench his thirst except by going to a grocery store and asking for a cup of water as a charity. Few people had the courage to beg for water, so they either went dry or paid for a glass of brandy. This, she said, had kept up the evil of drunkenness that was undermining the health and character of so many men and women. Once the pure Croton water was accessible and free, intoxication would cease. But old man Jessamine, himself a child now, belittled the significance of the Croton day. It would be nothing, he said, to the great day when the Erie Canal was opened and the first boat from the lakes started its voyage through the canal to the Hudson and down the river to the sea. He held the frantic children fast while he talked ancient history: described the marvelous speed of the news. “The very identical moment the first drop of Erie water entered the canal at Buffalo, a cannon was fired. Eight miles away stood another cannon and the minute that cannoneer heard the first shot, he fired the second cannon. Eight miles away was another, and so on all the way to Sandy Hook. For more than five hundred miles the cannon were lined up eight miles apart and it took only an hour and twenty minutes for the news to reach New York, and then they sent the news back to Buffalo the same way; and so it took less than three hours to send a message more than a thousand miles. Wasn’t that wonderful?” The children wriggled impatiently and said, “Please, grampa, the bands are playing. We’d better hurry.” The old man held them tighter and went on: “When the canal boats reached New York there was a grand procession of ships, and there were two elegant kegs of Erie water with gold hoops and Governor Clinton emptied one of them into the ocean to marry the sea to the lakes; and another man poured in phials of water from the Elbe, the Rhine, the Rhone, and all the rivers and seas. And the land parade, you should have seen that! All the societies had wagons: the Hatters’ Society with men making hats before your very eyes; the Rope-makers with a ropewalk in operation; the comb-makers, the cordwainers, the printers printing an ode. To-day will be nothing to what people did when I was young, for in those days——” But the children had broken away from his sharp knees and his fat stomach and his mildewed legends. The band outside was irresistible, and their father was waiting to say good-by to them.