As we have seen in the last chapter of my memoirs, I did write a bit of verse on the subject which made him very angry, but beyond that I did nothing, and then the great scandal came! [Illustration: Noah regrets having shipped guinea pigs.] It was the blackest hour of my life when it came to be rumored in and about Enochsville that Noah, now grown to independent estate, had method in his madness, and was about to embark upon a questionable financial enterprise.

One of the yellow journals of the day--for we had them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high--one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termed _The International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company_, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its sensational accusations.

It could not be denied, as was stated in _The Enochsville Evening Gad_, that Noah had built a large, unwieldy vessel of his own designing in the old pasture up back of our Enochsville farm, miles away from tide-level.

That it resembled what _The Gad_ called a cross between a cow-barn and a Lehigh Valley Coal-Barge, was evident to anybody who had merely glanced at it.

But what was its apparent purpose?
asked the reporter of _The Gad_.