the connection between the public treasury, the city of Napoleon and
legislation for the benefit off the whole country.
Harry was the guest of Senator Dilworthy. There was scarcely any good
movement in which the Senator was not interested. His house was open to
all the laborers in the field of total abstinence, and much of his time
was taken up in attending the meetings of this cause. He had a Bible
class in the Sunday school of the church which he attended, and he
suggested to Harry that he might take a class during the time he remained
in Washington, Mr. Washington Hawkins had a class. Harry asked the
Senator if there was a class of young ladies for him to teach, and after
that the Senator did not press the subject.
Philip, if the truth must be told, was not well satisfied with his
western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with.
The railroad contractors held out large but rather indefinite promises.
Opportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for
himself he saw no better means for livelihood than the mastery of the
profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon. During the summer
he had made considerable practical advance in the science of engineering;
he had been diligent, and made himself to a certain extent necessary to
the work he was engaged on. The contractors called him into their
consultations frequently, as to the character of the country he had been
over, and the cost of constructing the road, the nature of the work, etc.
Still Philip felt that if he was going to make either reputation or money
as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is
to his credit that he did not shrink from it. While Harry was in
Washington dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making
the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted
himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable
of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of
railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the “Plow, the
Loom and the Anvil,” upon the strength of materials, and especially upon
bridge-building,, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied
into the English “Practical Magazine.” They served at any rate to raise
Philip in the opinion of his friends the contractors, for practical men
have a certain superstitious estimation of ability with the pen, and
though they may a little despise the talent, they are quite ready to make
use of it.
Philip sent copies of his performances to Ruth’s father and to other
gentlemen whose good opinion he coveted, but he did not rest upon his
laurels. Indeed, so diligently had he applied himself, that when it came
time for him to return to the West, he felt himself, at least in theory,
competent to take charge of a division in the field.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The capital of the Great Republic was a new world to country-bred
Washington Hawkins. St. Louis was a greater city, but its floating.
population did not hail from great distances, and so it had the general
family aspect of the permanent population; but Washington gathered its
people from the four winds of heaven, and so the manners, the faces and
the fashions there, presented a variety that was infinite. Washington
had never been in “society” in St. Louis, and he knew nothing of the ways
of its wealthier citizens and had never inspected one of their dwellings.
Consequently, everything in the nature of modern fashion and grandeur was
a new and wonderful revelation to him.
Washington is an interesting city to any of us. It seems to become more
and more interesting the oftener we visit it. Perhaps the reader has
never been there? Very well. You arrive either at night, rather too
late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early
in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an
hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic. You cannot