wheels, to be launched instant into the sky!

Shall I ever forget that happy October day of
anticipation?

We spent many of those October days in tentative
surveys. Alice and Bertha were our chain-men,
intelligent and obedient. I drove for George his stakes,
or I cut away his brush, or I raised and lowered the
shield at which he sighted and at noon Polly appeared
with her baskets, and we would dine al fresco, on a
pretty point which, not many months after, was wholly
covered by the eastern end of the dam. When the field-
work was finished we retired to the cabin for days, and
calculated and drew, and drew and calculated. Estimates
for feeding Irishmen, estimates of hay for mules,--George
was sure he could work mules better than oxen,--estimates
for cement, estimates for the preliminary saw-mills,
estimates for rail for the little brick-road, for wheels,
for spikes, and for cutting ties; what did we not
estimate for--on a basis almost wholly new, you will
observe. For here the brick would cost us less than our
old conceptions,--our water-power cost us almost
nothing,--but our stores and our wages would cost us much
more.

These estimates are now to me very curious,--a
monument, indeed, to dear George's memory, that in the
result they proved so accurate. I would gladly print
them here at length, with some illustrative cuts, but