- end_line
- 6653
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6568
- text
- THE HAPPY FAILURE
A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON
The appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the
river-side, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to be ready,
and the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled old black man. As
yet, the nature of the wonderful experiment remained a mystery to all
but the projector.
I was first on the spot. The village was high up the river, and the
inland summer sun was already oppressively warm. Presently, I saw my
uncle advancing beneath the trees, hat off, and wiping his brow; while
far behind staggered poor old Yorpy, with what seemed one of the gates
of Gaza on his back.
‘Come, hurry, stump along, Yorpy!’ cried my uncle, impatiently turning
round every now and then.
Upon the black’s staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that the great
gate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby, oblong box,
hermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of the box quadrupled the
mystery in my mind.
‘Is _this_ the wonderful apparatus?’ said I, in amazement. ‘Why, it’s
nothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed up. And is _this_ the
thing, uncle, that is to make you a million of dollars ere the year be
out? What a forlorn-looking, lack-lustre, old ash-box it is.’
‘Put it into the skiff!’ roared my uncle to Yorpy, without heeding my
boyish disdain. ‘Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub--put it in
carefully, carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune
collapses.’
‘Bursts?--collapses?’ cried I, in alarm. ‘It ain’t full of combustibles?
Quick! let me go to the farther end of the boat!’
‘Sit still, you simpleton!’ cried my uncle again. ‘Jump in, Yorpy, and
hold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully!
carefully! you dunder-headed black! Mind t’other side of the box, I say!
Do you mean to destroy the box?’
‘Duyvel take te pox!’ muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch
African. ‘De pox has been my cuss for de ten long ’ear.’
‘Now, then, we’re off--take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the
box fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking
the box! Easy! easy! there’s a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water at
last! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island.’
‘The island!’ said I. ‘There’s no island hereabouts.’
‘There is ten miles above the bridge, though,’ said my uncle,
determinately.
‘Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in
this blazing sun!’
‘All that I have to say,’ said my uncle, firmly, ‘is that we are bound
to Quash Island.’
‘Mercy, uncle! if I had known of this great long pull of ten mortal
miles in this fiery sun, you wouldn’t have juggled _me_ into the skiff
so easy. What’s _in_ that box?--paving-stones? See how the skiff settles
down under it. I won’t help pull a box of paving-stones ten miles.
What’s the use of pulling ’em?’
‘Look you, simpleton,’ quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar.
‘Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don’t want to share in the glory
of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal
renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial of
my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and
marshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into
fields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I
repeat, to have this proud thing to tell--in far future days, when poor
old I shall have been long dead and gone, boy--to your children, and
your children’s children; in that case, sir, you are free to land
forthwith.’
‘Oh, uncle! I did not mean----’
‘No words, sir! Yorpy, take this oar, and help pull him ashore.’
‘But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that----’
- title
- Chunk 1