n the
face. Indeed, he was the larger half of his stories. His face was
thoughtful and stern. Though he seldom found fault, he never did more
than once; but he was by no means violent. His mildness was more
forcible than anger. He wore a full beard, but no mustache, thus
exhibiting his long, determined lip. At forty he was already bald, and
after he was sixty he always wore indoors a black skull-cap.
Scrupulously cleanly, in his dress he was point-device. Without the
least ostentation, his clothes were invariably faultless. From young
manhood he had thought that it is due to one's self and to one's
friends to look one's best; and he had also realized the practical
value of a good appearance. Often impressing this on his wife and
daughters, he would have them at all times well dressed. Really he
seems to have been a point too precise. He was just the opposite to
those geniuses whose great brain shows itself by a sloppy exterior.
Eads was never sloppy, even at home.

His great brain showed itself in its restless activity, in its grasp of
laws and of details, in its fight to help and to better the country and
the world. For it was not only the lusty pleasure of battling with
Nature that made him long for another struggle with the Mississippi: he
saw the value there was in it to commerce and to civilization. Before
the war he had long contended with stubborn currents, and with ice, and
by his energy and his talent for inventing new devices he had become
the most successful wrecker on the river. Abandoning the peaceful but
lively triumphs of snatching hulls and cargoes from the maw of the
stream, he had offered the government to cleanse its course and thereby
to increase its safety and usefulness. In war times, owing to his
knowledge of the waterways and of science, he had been able to build,
with a speed fairly romantic, a gunboat fleet to patrol the
Mississippi. Already now greater schemes for improving this central
highway of our country were in his mind, but as yet the fullness of the
time was not come. Still, he was no longer merely the careful son and
father striving to protect his beloved ones and with no dreams of
broader duties; he was no longer contented with rose-arbors for an
occupation. The grim war had roused him; his years of rest were over;
he was the well-known boat-builder,--engineer, perhaps some persons
already called him,--and his mind was teeming with schemes of
helpfulness. Yet his ambition was not fo