She could make the voyage from the upper end of the
Tappan Zee to New York in a day, no matter how the wind blew. Hanz
Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody
else. The bright blaze of her furnaces, and the long trail of fire and
sparks issuing from her funnel of a dark night, gave a spectre-like
appearance to her movements, that rather increased a belief amongst the
superstitious that she was really an invention of the evil one, sent for
some bad purpose.
A meeting was called at Hanz Toodleburg's house to consider the
dangerous look of things along the river. The Dominie and the
schoolmaster, and all the wise men in the settlement, were present, and
gave their opinions with the greatest gravity. If this Mr. Fulton, it
was argued, could, with the aid of the evil one, build these steamboats
to go to New York and back in a day, why there was an end to the
business of sloops and barges. And if the honest men who owned these
vessels were thrown out of business, how were they to get bread for
their families? These new inventions, Hanz argued, would be the ruin of
no end of honest people.
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