Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/860

840 at that was realized in every part of the labors. The resources of science were drawn upon with an unerring vision of their scope; the appliances of engineering art were employed with precise adaptation to their purpose, and an exact measurement of the effect they were intended to produce; so that in all that has been achieved there has been no failure and no waste. The demonstration which General Newton has made in this work of the power of science, whose least effort can be made useful to such immense results, commands its recognition of him as its vigorous man of action. The knowledge and skill which he has thus been able to apply to such exact measurement and direction are the outcome of a life of special training and exercise; and it would be hard to produce a higher testimonial to the value of the faithful pursuit of the studies that relate to the work one is destined to do in the world than these achievements at Hell-Gate.

There is yet one enterprise connected with the improvement of the harbor of New York—the opening of the Harlem River to Spuyten Duyvel, on which General Newton reported in 1875 and 1876 which has been postponed by conflicting interests of property-owners and the difficulty of securing rights.

Since his station at New York, General Newton has often been called into consultation on many civil-engineering works. In connection with the various duties of his office his experience has been large and varied, and it would be impossible to name an engineer who has been so uniformly successful.

Recently, when the city of New York—having a more important work in view than it had yet undertaken in a municipal capacity—found it necessary to secure a man of superior skill and scientific training to superintend its Department of Public Works, General Newton's name was the first, and, we might well say, the only one that suggested itself. The only doubt expressed on the subject was whether he would be willing to leave the body with which he had been connected all his life, with such distinguished honor, for one the record of which has not always been free from the taint of political manipulations. This question was happily solved by General Newton's declaration of his willingness to accept the position on the retired list of the army, to which he was entitled, in order to go to the place where he was more needed. The fitness of his appointment has been universally recognized, and is most felicitously expressed in the words of one of the newspapers, that he is the "ideal man" for the position.