politics; and on being
asked privately in a joint letter from the editors of three Saint Louis
papers (two of them German) exactly what his politics were, he replied
that he was as strongly in favor of emancipation as he was opposed to
slavery, and that he believed in no "kid-glove policy;" but he remarked
incidentally that if he were to be offered the mayoralty he should
refuse it.

His work was for the whole country. While he was still too much
engrossed with his turrets and his plans for new boats, he fell very
ill. Indeed there can be no question that he sacrificed his health to
build the gunboats. Never very robust, he was now so ill that eight
doctors gave him up. His indomitable spirit pulled him through, but he
was ordered away from his workshop to Europe, he and his family. His
overburden of labor had crushed him,--before this his eyes had been
tired out. Bates charged him to take care of himself; "the country
can't spare you," he said "and I can't spare you."

Unless Bates was a prophet, we may well think the first of these
statements unduly strong. To be sure, when in a crucial moment the
gunboats were needed, and needed quickly, Eads's unparalleled haste in
building them certainly did an inestimable service to the country. But
so far in his career,--and he was over forty,--while he had shown a
marked inventive talent, he had not as yet made clear his signal genius
for engineering. And although he had exhibited wonderful executive
ability and such true patriotism as made him a valued citizen, he had
still to render himself indispensable to the development of the nation.

III

THE BRIDGE

Eads was bred to the Mississippi. He had mastered its secrets by hard
experience; he had worked in successful opposition to its great wayward
forces. But he was not to be content till he had tamed it, till he had
saddled it, and, wild as it will always be, had made it nevertheless
subservient to him. To his quietly stubborn spirit there was a
delightful invigoration in using his brain to conquer the brute force
of this capricious monster. For the river is the grandest power between
our two oceans. Niagara is more sublime; but Niagara is constant, and
therefore its immense strength has been easily set to a task. The
Mississippi is so irregular that one tends unconsciously to personify
it by calling it tricky. To find the causes of its sudden changes one
must go back hundreds of miles to the mountains east and we