NEAR Market Street Ferry, in the city of Philadelphia, is located the shipping and commission house of Gilman & Baker; and lying at the pier directly opposite, on a certain day this summer, was a jaunty but odd-looking yacht, thirty-five feet in length, with the name Restless in gilt letters on her bow.
In general design she was not different from the ordinary steam yacht; but the short smokestack rising from the hurricane deck aft caused her to appear, as the cook of a tugboat nearby expressed it, "like she had been stripped half naked." Every one who saw her stopped for a moment at least, and several, on learning that she was what is known as a "naphtha launch," pronounced most emphatically against the use of such power.
"It's bad enough to run the risk of bein' blowed up by a reg'lar steam craft," the cook of the tug said musingly; "but after it comes to sailin' with what's worse'n a powder magazine aboard, I'm ready to stay ashore. When two or three barrels of oil are where a match will send the whole craft flyin' like a sky rocket, it's mightily near temptin' of Providence to run her from here to Camden."