Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/90

80, of trust and hopefulness in which he moved caused many with whom he was brought in contact to surpass themselves, and surprise their friends.

His son, of a somewhat similar disposition, impulsive, warm-hearted, brimful of the cheerfulness and frankness of youth, played his part easily and naturally. Seemingly on terms of perfect equality, he mingled with those amongst whom his lot was cast without spice of patronage or condescension, invested merely with that native dignity education and worth impart, hedging round true nobility from encroachments familiarity might encourage.

One thing young Travers did think and puzzle much about. Not so much the social as the mechanical question. Years of practical apprenticeship in the workshops of Germany, together with observation in America, had constituted him a resourceful engineer of the modern school. So much—little as yet—that could be acquired of electrical science and its practical application, he was conversant with. Machinery, he recognized, had served to augment the social inequalities that he with his father deplored. His aim was to cause science and machinery to serve for once the people's good.

"You band the men together, see that their hearts beat right," he would say to his father; "I will put a subtle power into their hands that shall yet again redouble their strength."

At the head of the valley the stream from the mountains passed through two or three reed-covered lagoons—the banks converging towards a narrow inlet. There the waters leapt and dashed over the huge boulders that spanned the gorge.

"Bubble on, pretty brook," the young engineer had said, "you, like all else here, must henceforth work,