--well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James, if you must have it--and run
along with you. Here, now--the soap will do for Babylon. Let me see
--where was I? Oh yes--now we run down to Stone's Lan--Napoleon--now we
run down to Napoleon. Beautiful road. Look at that, now. Perfectly
straight line-straight as the way to the grave. And see where it leaves
Hawkeye-clear out in the cold, my dear, clear out in the cold. That
town's as bound to die as--well if I owned it I'd get its obituary ready,
now, and notify the mourners. Polly, mark my words--in three years from
this, Hawkeye'll be a howling wilderness. You'll see. And just look at
that river--noblest stream that meanders over the thirsty earth!
--calmest, gentlest artery that refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad
goes all over it and all through it--wades right along on stilts.
Seventeen bridges in three miles and a half--forty-nine bridges from
Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone's Landing altogether--forty nine bridges, and
culverts enough to culvert creation itself! Hadn't skeins of thread
enough to represent them all--but you get an idea--perfect trestle-work
of bridges for seventy two miles: Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you
know; he's to get the contracts and I'm to put them through on the
divide. Just oceans of money in those bridges. It's the only part of
the railroad I'm interested in,--down along the line--and it's all I
want, too. It's enough, I should judge. Now here we are at Napoleon.
Good enough country plenty good enough--all it wants is population.
That's all right--that will come. And it's no bad country now for
calmness and solitude, I can tell you--though there's no money in that,
of course. No money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace--a man
don't want to rip and tear around all the time. And here we go, now,
just as straight as a string for Hallelujah--it's a beautiful angle
--handsome up grade all the way --and then away you go to Corruptionville,
the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever--good
missionary field, too. There ain't such another missionary field outside