197. Robert Fulton and Mr. Livingston go to New York and build a
steamboat; the trip up the Hudson River.--But Robert Fulton and Mr.
Livingston both believed that a steamboat could be built that would
go, and that would keep going. So they went to New York and built
one there.
In the summer of 1807 a great crowd gathered to see the boat start
on her voyage up the Hudson River. They joked and laughed as crowds
will at anything new. They called Fulton a fool and Livingston
another. But when Fulton, standing on the deck of his steamboat,
waved his hand, and the wheels began to turn, and the vessel began
to move up the river, then the crowd became silent with astonishment.
Now it was Fulton's turn to laugh, and in such a case the man who
laughs last has a right to laugh the loudest.
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