{"id":"01KG6G84WX2AJE9Y9DMFN0MS6Z","cid":"bafkreich6h7fxtqzhxi3swqdztrrol537bhenm3moc7uggl63enuiuibfm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":6653,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":6568,"text":"                           THE HAPPY FAILURE\r\n\r\n                      A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON\r\n\r\n\r\nThe appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the\r\nriver-side, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to be ready,\r\nand the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled old black man. As\r\nyet, the nature of the wonderful experiment remained a mystery to all\r\nbut the projector.\r\n\r\nI was first on the spot. The village was high up the river, and the\r\ninland summer sun was already oppressively warm. Presently, I saw my\r\nuncle advancing beneath the trees, hat off, and wiping his brow; while\r\nfar behind staggered poor old Yorpy, with what seemed one of the gates\r\nof Gaza on his back.\r\n\r\n‘Come, hurry, stump along, Yorpy!’ cried my uncle, impatiently turning\r\nround every now and then.\r\n\r\nUpon the black’s staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that the great\r\ngate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby, oblong box,\r\nhermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of the box quadrupled the\r\nmystery in my mind.\r\n\r\n‘Is _this_ the wonderful apparatus?’ said I, in amazement. ‘Why, it’s\r\nnothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed up. And is _this_ the\r\nthing, uncle, that is to make you a million of dollars ere the year be\r\nout? What a forlorn-looking, lack-lustre, old ash-box it is.’\r\n\r\n‘Put it into the skiff!’ roared my uncle to Yorpy, without heeding my\r\nboyish disdain. ‘Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub--put it in\r\ncarefully, carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune\r\ncollapses.’\r\n\r\n‘Bursts?--collapses?’ cried I, in alarm. ‘It ain’t full of combustibles?\r\nQuick! let me go to the farther end of the boat!’\r\n\r\n‘Sit still, you simpleton!’ cried my uncle again. ‘Jump in, Yorpy, and\r\nhold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully!\r\ncarefully! you dunder-headed black! Mind t’other side of the box, I say!\r\nDo you mean to destroy the box?’\r\n\r\n‘Duyvel take te pox!’ muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch\r\nAfrican. ‘De pox has been my cuss for de ten long ’ear.’\r\n\r\n‘Now, then, we’re off--take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the\r\nbox fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking\r\nthe box! Easy! easy! there’s a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water at\r\nlast! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island.’\r\n\r\n‘The island!’ said I. ‘There’s no island hereabouts.’\r\n\r\n‘There is ten miles above the bridge, though,’ said my uncle,\r\ndeterminately.\r\n\r\n‘Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in\r\nthis blazing sun!’\r\n\r\n‘All that I have to say,’ said my uncle, firmly, ‘is that we are bound\r\nto Quash Island.’\r\n\r\n‘Mercy, uncle! if I had known of this great long pull of ten mortal\r\nmiles in this fiery sun, you wouldn’t have juggled _me_ into the skiff\r\nso easy. What’s _in_ that box?--paving-stones? See how the skiff settles\r\ndown under it. I won’t help pull a box of paving-stones ten miles.\r\nWhat’s the use of pulling ’em?’\r\n\r\n‘Look you, simpleton,’ quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar.\r\n‘Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don’t want to share in the glory\r\nof my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal\r\nrenown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial of\r\nmy Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and\r\nmarshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into\r\nfields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I\r\nrepeat, to have this proud thing to tell--in far future days, when poor\r\nold I shall have been long dead and gone, boy--to your children, and\r\nyour children’s children; in that case, sir, you are free to land\r\nforthwith.’\r\n\r\n‘Oh, uncle! I did not mean----’\r\n\r\n‘No words, sir! Yorpy, take this oar, and help pull him ashore.’\r\n\r\n‘But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that----’\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6Q62R4C7A5SAZF9TP92K","peer_type":"article","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G84WX34CKE5AAT74TJD2E","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.925Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:28.470Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}