ing cranes and carrying system down to pick-axes, crowbars and
shovels. I made a note of the fact that many of the smaller implements
were not cared for properly and even tried to estimate how with proper
attention the life of a pick-axe could be prolonged. I joyed
particularly in every such opportunity as this no matter how trivial
it appeared later. It was just such details as these which gave
reality to my dream.

I figured out how many cubic feet of earth per day per man was being
handled here and how this varied under different bosses. I pried and
listened and questioned and figured even when digging. I worked with
my eyes and ears wide open. It was wonderful how quickly in this way
the hours flew. A day now didn't seem more than four hours long. Many
the time I've felt actually sorry when the signal to quit work was
given at night and have hung around for half an hour while the
engineer fixed his boiler for the night and the old man lighted his
lanterns to string along the excavation. I don't know what they all
thought of me, but I know some of them set me down for a college man
doing the work for experience. This to say the least was flattering to
my years.

As I say, a lot of this work was wasted energy in the sense that I
acquired anything worth while, but none of it was wasted when I recall
the joy of it. If I had actually been a college boy in the first flush
of youthful enthusiasm I could not have gone at my work more
enthusiastically or dreamed wilder or bigger dreams. Even after many
of these bubbles were pricked and had vanished, the mood which made
them did not vanish. I have never forgotten and never can forget the
sheer delight of those months. I was eighteen again with a lot besides
that I didn't have at eighteen.

My work along another line was more practical and more successful.
What I learned about the men and the best way to handle them was
genuine capital. In the first place I lost no opportunity to make
myself as solid as possible with Dan Rafferty. This was not altogether
from a purely selfish motive either. I liked the man. In a way I think
he was the most lovable man I ever met, although that seems a
lady-like term to apply to so rugged a fellow. But below his beef and
brawn, below his aggressiveness, below his coarseness, below even a
peculiar moral bluntness about a good many things, there was a strain
of something fine about Dan Rafferty. I had a glimpse of it when he
preferred going b