Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 24.djvu/613

1869.] for the preliminary saw - mills, esti- mates 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 that I know the impatience of the public, and its indifference to detail. If we are ever able to print a proper memorial of George, that, perhaps, will be the fitter place for them. Suffice it to say that with the subtractions thus made from the original estimates even with the additions forced upon us by working in a wilderness George was satisfied that a money charge of $ 197,327 would build and start THE MOON. As soon as we had determined the site, we marked off eighty acres, .which con- tained all the essential localities, up and down the little Carrotook River, I engaged George for the first school- master in No. 9, and he took these eighty acres for the schoolmaster's res- ervation. Alice and Bertha went to school to him the next day, taking les- sons in civil engineering ; and I wrote to the Bingham trustees to notify them .that I had engaged a teacher, and that he had selected his land.

Of course we remembered, still, that we were near forty thousand dollars short of the' new estimates, and also that much of our money would not be paid us but on condition that two hun- dred and fifty thousand were raised. But George said that his own subscrip- tion was wholly unhampered : with that we would go to work on the preliminary work of the dam, and on the flies. Then, if the flies would hold together, and they should hold if mortise and iron could hold them, they might be at work summers and winters, days and nights, storing up Power for us. This would encourage the subscribers, nay, would encourage us ; and all this preliminary work would be out of the way when we were really ready to be- gin upon the MOON.

Brannan, Haliburton, and O. readily agreed to this when they were consult- ed. They were the other trustees un- der an instrument which we had got St. Leger to draw up. George gave up, as soon as he might, his other ap- pointments ; and taught me, meanwhile, where and how I was to rig a little saw-mill, to cut some necessary lumber. I engaged a gang of men to cut the timber for the dam, and to have it ready; and, with the next spring, we were well at work on the dam and on the flies ! These needed, of course, the most solid foundation. The least irregularity of their movement might send the MOON awry.

Ah me ! would I not gladly tell the history of every bar of iron which was bent into the tires of those flies, and of every log which was mortised into its place in the dam, nay, of every curling mass of foam which played in the eddies beneath, when the dam was finished, and the waste water ran so smoothly over ? Alas ! that one drop should be wasted of water that might move a world, although a small one ! I almost dare say that I remember each and all these, with such hope and happiness did I lend myself, as I could, each day to the great enterprise ; lending to dear George, who was here and there and everywhere, and was this and that and everybody, lending to him, I say, such poor help as I could lend, in whatever way. We waked, in the two cabins, in those happy days, just before the sun came up, when the birds were in their loudest clamor of morning joy. Wrapped each in a blan- ket, George and I stepped out from our doors, each trying to call the oth- er, and often meeting on the grass between. We ran to the river and plunged in, O, how cold it was ! laughed and screamed like boys, rubbed ourselves aglow, and ran home to build