black roadway skeleton a hundred feet
overhead. It was a long street of iron resting on a long street of wood,
with timber and steel built up in X's on X's, the whole rising in an
easy slant to yonder grim tower that loomed heavy and ugly against the
sky, a huge bow-legged H with the upper half stretched to a great
length, and each leg piled up with more black X's held by two enormous
ones between. It looked for all the world as if it had come ready made
in a box and had been jointed together like children's blocks, which is
about the truth, for this great bridge was finished on paper, then in
all its parts, before ever a beam of it saw the East River. As I drew
near its feet (which could take a row of houses between heel and toe) I
had the illusion, due to bigness and height, that the whole tower was
rocking toward me under the hurrying clouds; and at first I did not see
the workmen swarming over it, they were so tiny.

But they were making noise enough, these workmen, with their striking
and hoisting and shouting. There was the ring of hammers, the
_chunk-chunk_ of engines, the hiss of steam, the mellow sound of planks
falling on planks, and the angry clash of metal. Presently, far up the
sides of the tower, I made out painters dangling on scaffolding or
crawling out on girders, busy with scrapers and brushes. And higher
still I saw the glow of red-hot iron, where the riveters were working.
And at the very top I watched black dots of men swing out over the gulf
on the monster derrick-booms, or haul on the guiding-lines. And from
time to time the signal-bell would send its impatient call to the
throttle-man below, six strokes, four strokes, one stroke, telling him
what to do with his engine, and to do it quick.

The yardmen seemed to get on in the din by a system of strange yells.
Here were a score of sturdy fellows doing something with a long steel
floor-beam. They were working in scattered groups, some on the ground,
some on the roadway overhead. It was lower pulley-blocks, and spread out
flapping cables, and hitch fast the load, all without any hurry.
Suddenly a man at the left would put a hand to his mouth and sing out:
"Hey-y-y!" and a man overhead would answer: "Yeow-yeow-yeow!" and then
they all would cry: "Ho-hoo-ho-hoooo!" and up would go the floor-beam,
twisting as she lifted, a nice little load of ten tons, and presently
clang down on her lofty bed like a peal of high-pitched thunder.

I chanced to be talk