Now, when I set on foot a scheme for
carrying the Atlantic mail in steamers, and calculated all the
distances and chances, and showed them Bristol folks (for I went to
that place on purpose) that it was shorter by thirty-six miles to come
to Halifax, and then go to New York, than to go to New York direct,
they just laughed at me, and so did the English Government. They said
it couldn't be shorter in the nature of things. There was a captain in
the navy to London too, who said, 'Mr Slick, you are wrong, and I
think I ought to know something about it,' giving a toss of his head.
'Well,' sais I, with another toss of mine, 'I think you ought too, and
I am sorry you don't, that's all.'
"Then the Squire said:--'Why, how you talk, Mr Slick! Recollect, if
you please, that Doctor Lardner says that steam won't do to cross the
Atlantic, and he is a great gun."
"'Well,' sais I, 'I don't care a fig for what Lardner says, or any
other locomotive lecturer under the light of the living sun. If a
steamer can go agin a stream, and a plaguy strong one too, two
thousand five hundred miles up the Mississippi, why in natur can't it
be fixed so as to go across the Atlantic?'
"Well, some time after that, my second Clockmaker came out in London,
and, sais I, I'll stand or fall by my opinion, right or wrong, and I
just put it body and breeches all down in figures in that book.
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