jug with one hand. It’s as easy as lying. So.” He grasped the handle
with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his
lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple.
“Besides,” said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, “it puts every man on his
honor as to quantity.”
Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o’clock everybody
was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his
table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door
and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner
from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off
the unexpended seam of his conversational powers, in the words of this
stirring song.
It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the fire light,
he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the
stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which
followed the cook’s wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed
he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket’s red ,glare, and
heard him sing, “Oh, say, can you see?”, It was the first time he had
ever slept on the ground.
CHAPTER XVII.
—-“We have view’d it,
And measur’d it within all, by the scale
The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom!
There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions,
Or more, as’t may be handled!
The Devil is an Ass.
Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brierly. The
completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay
fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters
and cooks.
“I reckon you didn’t git them boots no wher’s this side o’ Sent Louis?”
queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy’s assistant.
“No, New York.”
“Yas, I’ve heern o’ New York,” continued the butternut lad, attentively
studying each item of Harry’s dress, and endeavoring to cover his design
with interesting conversation. “‘N there’s Massachusetts.”,
“It’s not far off.”
“I’ve heern Massachusetts was a —– of a place. Les, see, what state’s
Massachusetts in?”
“Massachusetts,” kindly replied Harry, “is in the state of Boston.”
“Abolish’n wan’t it? They must a cost right smart,” referring to the
boots.
Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie
by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and
industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however,
the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical. Perhaps there
was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was
very much needed. They were making, what is called a preliminary survey,
and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement
about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it,
under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid
of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.
Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for
this work. He did not bother himself much about details or
practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the
top of one divide to the top of another, and striking “plumb” every town
site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In
his own language he “just went booming.”
This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical
details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country,
and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he
and Harry got the “refusal” of more than one plantation as they went
along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the
beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as
soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that
capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land.