ive
us the entire contract, provided you get your masonry ready?"

"Well, I would want a hundred thousand dollars from you, young man."

"All right," I said, "prepare your bond. Give us the work. Our firm is
not going to let me lose a hundred thousand dollars. You know that."

"Yes," he said, "I believe if you are bound for a hundred thousand
dollars your company will work day and night and I will get my
bridges."

This was the arrangement which gave us what were then the gigantic
contracts of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It is needless to say
that I never had to pay that bond. My partners knew much better than
Mr. Garrett the conditions of his work. The Ohio River was not to be
trifled with, and long before his masonry was ready we had relieved
ourselves from all responsibility upon the bond by placing the
superstructure on the banks awaiting the completion of the
substructure which he was still building.

Mr. Garrett was very proud of his Scottish blood, and Burns having
been once touched upon between us we became firm friends. He
afterwards took me to his fine mansion in the country. He was one of
the few Americans who then lived in the grand style of a country
gentleman, with many hundreds of acres of beautiful land, park-like
drives, a stud of thoroughbred horses, with cattle, sheep, and dogs,
and a home that realized what one had read of the country life of a
nobleman in England.

At a later date he had fully determined that his railroad company
should engage in the manufacture of steel rails and had applied for
the right to use the Bessemer patents. This was a matter of great
moment to us. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was one of our
best customers, and we were naturally anxious to prevent the building
of steel-rail rolling mills at Cumberland. It would have been a losing
enterprise for the Baltimore and Ohio, for I was sure it could buy its
steel rails at a much cheaper rate than it could possibly make the
small quantity needed for itself. I visited Mr. Garrett to talk the
matter over with him. He was then much pleased with the foreign
commerce and the lines of steamships which made Baltimore their port.
He drove me, accompanied by several of his staff, to the wharves where
he was to decide about their extension, and as the foreign goods were
being discharged from the steamship side and placed in the railway
cars, he turned to me and said:

"Mr. Carnegie, you can now begin to appreciate th