A TOAST TO NOAH. 



49 



several of the fleetest Atlantic mail steamers are three hundred 

 feet in length, fifty feet in breadth of beam, and twenty-eight 

 and a half in depth. They have, like the ark, upper, lower, and 

 middle stories. It is, to say the least, singular, that the ship- 

 builders of the present day, neglecting the experience acquired 

 by man from forty-two centuries spent more or less upon the 

 sea, should so directly and unreservedly return to the model of 

 the vessel constructed to outride the Flood. It was therefore 

 with obvious propriety that, at one of the late convivial meet- 

 ings in England during the preparations for laying the telegraphic 

 cable, after due honor had been paid to the celebrities of the 

 occasion and the moment, after the health of the Queen and the 

 memory of Columbus had been pledged and drunk, a toast was 

 offered to our great ancestor Noah. Though the proposition 

 was received with hilarity and the idea seemed to savor some- 

 what of a jest, yet the patriarch's claims, as the first admiral 

 on record, to being the father of seamen and the great originator 

 of navigation, were willingly and vociferously acknowledged. 

 After this recognition — which must, from the circumstances, be 

 regarded as in some measure official and conclusive — we could 

 not consistently have ventured to withhold from him the first 

 place in this record of the triumphs of thirty centuries. 



