Free The Banished Children of Eve by Peter Quinn

other shore. Not a dreamer at all, but a man waiting for history to catch up with him. He knew where the column of water led. He wasn’t mesmerized by tiny circles, nor did he confuse ripplets with waves.
    His problem was the same as his maternal granduncle’s, Oliver Evans. Foster had never met him, but he heard the story repeated over and over again by his mother, one of the few that drew out any sign of passion or excitement in her. She was there the day Evans drove his steam engine out of the yard near the Schuylkill River, a clanging, banging, puffing monster, its copper boiler sticking a thick thumb of smoke into the air. Behind this engine Evans pulled a steam dredge mounted on a scow—the “Orukter Amphibole,” he called it. He transported it through the quiet streets, scaring horses and dogs, sending a rush of birds into the air, the noise and smoke causing men and women to fear that the Last Judgment had arrived. A freewheeling steam engine that turned corners and climbed hills and pulled another ton of steam-driven machinery behind it. One more in a long line of Evans’s inventions. A mill that ran itself, free of any human hand. A machine for carding wool that could turn out 1,500 cards a minute. A pump to bring enough water to satisfy the daily requirements of 25,000 people. He could have brought America into the Age of Steam a generation before Stephenson put England on rails. But he was dismissed as a dreamer until the day came when the waters of history caught up with him, lifting the notion of the “Orukter Amphibole” on its crest, carrying it into the future. A horde of salesmen nowjumped in, infringing his patents, stealing his ideas, growing rich by selling what he had created and suffered for.
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day, lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away!
    â€œBeautiful Dreamer.” Firth, Pond & Co. had paid for it and had the plates engraved for printing, but they’d never used it. Maybe Daly would be interested in buying it from them. Then he would have his song. But would Daly want his twenty dollars back? Foster sensed someone standing behind him.
    â€œAre you waiting for a guest, sir?”
    A face bent close to his. A long nose and chin, side-whiskers running to the lips, the hair parted in the middle, greased down close to the skull, smelling of pomade. Foster kept his eyes on the fire. A new layer of ash was forming over the coals.
    â€œI’m digesting my lunch.”
    â€œSir, these seats are for our guests and their visitors. If you wish to digest your meal, I would think a walk in the fresh air might help.” The nameless clerk-critic stood next to the chair, his shiny black boots reflecting the golden-red coals. Foster sat still. The clerk didn’t move. “Sir,” he said again.
    Foster got up. Without looking at the clerk, he walked across the lobby. Men and women hurried past him. They shook their umbrellas and folded them.
    You never knew where an idea would come from. In the summer of 1849, the cholera struck Cincinnati. Iron tubs filled with charcoal burned at street corners and crossroads, the thick smoke a presumed antidote to the invisible vapors that carried the disease. The worst of it was among the immigrants and the Negroes. Their bodies piled up in the streets before the authorities could muster the men needed to bury them. Stephen moved out of the city to a small farm owned by a Mrs. Dodge. The landlady was thrilled with her tenant: Cincinnati’s musical poet. Soon she had turned Stephen into a specimen. He couldn’t eat a meal alone. There were always guests, friends of hers she wanted to introduce to the young and famous songwriter.
    On a wet, cold day in September, a few days before he was scheduled to return to the city, Mrs. Dodge told him she had an acquaintance coming to tea who had recently lost a child to the cholera. She was in very great need of cheering up. Her