Robert Fulton

								

other method to show patriotism. As the town council forbade the use of
candles, he would not disobey their law; perhaps he could prepare a more
novel celebration in honor of the holiday.
He had some candles which he had saved for the event; now they were of no
use. He therefore took them to a brush-maker who kept powder and shot for
sale, and offered to trade them for gunpowder. The brush-maker, surprised
that the boy would part with his candles when they were so scarce, asked
his reason. The lad replied:
“Our rulers have asked the people not to illuminate their windows and
streets. All good citizens should obey law, so I have decided instead to
light the heavens with sky-rockets.”
The dealer, although amused, was glad to get the candles and promptly
gave gunpowder in exchange. Then the boy went to another store, where he
bought several large sheets of cardboard. The clerk was about to roll
the sheets for easy handling, but his customer protested:
“I wish to carry them as they are.”
The curiosity of this man also was aroused. He remembered that the lad
was said to be “always trying to invent something.” As he handed them
over he asked:
“What are you going to do with them?”
Eagerly the boy answered: “We are forbidden to light our windows with
candles. I’m going to shoot my candles through the air.”
“Tut! Tut!” exclaimed the man, laughingly. “That’s an impossibility.”
“No, sir,” the boy responded, with a flash of enthusiasm. “There is
nothing impossible.”
This is a true story, told by an old-time Lancaster historian. The
thirteen-year-old boy was Robert Fulton, who became the inventor of steam
navigation.
It is good to carry the story further in imagination. That group of
boys who gathered in the town during the twilight of Independence Day,
1778, saw a few spluttering rockets shoot skyward from the hand of a
lad determined to carry the good news of freedom to a higher horizon
than that of the home windows of Lancaster. A flash! A whirr! and the
light arose, zigzagged its message through the darkness, like fiery
handwriting in the sky, and then died away. But the fine courage and
courtesy of the boy who would not disobey a local law, although he felt a
national appeal to patriotic jubilee,—these tokens of character have not
faded. They prophesied the boy’s success in life. He foretold it in his
words, “Nothing is impossible.”
Robert Fulton’s father was one of three brothers, David, John, and
Robert. They were of Scotch origin, and came to America from Kilkenny,
Ireland, about 1730. Robert, the youngest, settled in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, where in 1759 he married Miss Mary Smith, daughter of
Joseph Smith of Oxford Township, and bought for their first home a brick
dwelling on the northeast corner of Penn Square, in the center of the
town. In this house they lived until 1764. They took an active interest