ften slow in arriving and thereby made matters drag considerably.
Still there was always something to do, and Eads, the only one of the
partners who understood the trade, was forced to work extraordinarily
hard. With his usual persistence he stuck to it pluckily, often staying
up late into the night and rising the next day before dawn to oversee
operations. He was also indispensable for his faculty of managing men;
and a letter to his wife written on his twenty-seventh birthday (1847)
shows how strong the man already was in that power of getting the most
from a workman, which was afterwards to count for so much in his best
work. An employer, he says, must "have constant control of his temper,
and be able to speak pleasantly to one man the next moment after having
spoken in the harshest manner to another, and even to give the same man
a pleasant reply a few minutes after having corrected him. Self must be
left out of the matter entirely, and a man or boy spoken to only as
concerns his conduct; and the authority which the controller has over
the controlled, used only when absolutely necessary, and then with the
utmost promptness."

However, despite all his firmness and perseverance, the difficulties of
the glassworks became greater and greater; and at last, after having
been run two years, they were shut down. Eads was left with debts of
$25,000. The very unusual action of his creditors in this crisis shows
what confidence they had in his integrity and in his ability; for they
advanced him $1500 with which to go back into the wrecking business,
and he at once rejoined his former partners. He now worked harder, if
possible, than ever; for he felt, as he wrote to his wife, that "with a
man in debt it cannot be said that his time is his own." Powerful as he
was physically, his health was not good, but even in sickness he
scarcely ceased to toil during the first year or two; and at the end of
ten years, not only had all his debts been long since paid, but his
firm was worth half a million dollars.

Work, however, was to him only a means to an end. The real dignity of
character he knew to lie in culture. To a small boy he sends, in one of
his letters, the message that he should "be a good boy and study hard,
as that is the only way to be respected when he is grown." Even in his
amusements his mind sought occupation: we find him at night on the
diving-bell boat playing chess, and in later years he had become
unusually adept at