20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



mechanics considered the question of such an enlargement of onr 

 ocean vessels as would enable them to cover several of the largest 

 •waves, be provided with several adequate engines, &e. The sub- 

 ject continued some days ; and the theory was maintained that 

 such an enormous vessel, say one thousand feet long, might be con- 

 structed, as in nature, cellular, so that adequate strength can be 

 obtained by iron, together with perfect safety from fire and found 

 ering. But, as the idea was new, and demanded great caution, 

 we decided not to lay it before the world. We, however, had an 

 English engineer about us, who, we said, will send these hints to 

 England, from whence we expected to hear, by the next arrival, 

 of its being duly invented there, as many a Yankee notion is. 



We have hoped that they would succeed. The Great Eastern 

 seems to promise success. Let her come ! our Long Island Sound, 

 East river, Hudson river for two hundred miles, can float her, 

 from Montauk point to our city oj Hudson, one hundred miles above 

 JVew York, a harbor unequalled upon earth I 



But, if England and the world fail in making such ships, we 

 shall not fail! 



The first successful master of the fierce Atlantic will be the 

 Americaii,^ammoth ship from New York, the London of the west, 

 the centre of the New World now, soon to be the commercial centre 

 of the whole world. 



You see here, ladies and gentlemen, American work, of which 

 much is of surpassing beauty and utility. May I invite you first, 

 to the tailor's sword, his shears ; see them, of sparkling, dazzling 

 silver hilts and gleaming steel blades ! No Emperor's sceptre was 

 ever more resplendent ! Do you know that London and Paris 

 have not been able to cut themselves into fashion, without our 

 Yankee shears ? Even so : we shear them still. Once the tailor 

 was but the ninth part of a man ; now he is nine men to one, for 

 without him, what are we ? Even so with the ancient farm work- 

 man, the villain, the boor, the bog-trotter, who was despised by the 

 velvet-handed aristocracy, who saw him delving with wretched 

 rusty iron tools. How now ? Like the tailor, he has risen to 

 rank; his spade, plow, scythe, axe, all glitter with polish. Em- 

 perors and ladies smile courteously upon him; genius works for 

 ■him ; science labors for him ; schools, colleges, universities, teach 

 him and praise him ; chemists labor in their laboratories for him. 

 In old times the alchemists labored for life in the vain efibrt to 

 transmute base metals into gold ; now see them all laboring to 

 transmute all base refuse material into corn, wine, and oil. 



