ment that he was, like de Lesseps, only a contractor. He was a
very unusually brilliant engineer, and his ignorance of the higher
mathematics served to show his brilliancy the more clearly. Some
persons have said that his chief talent was in explaining abstruse
reasonings simply; but an engineer has told me that he thought Eads's
chief talent was his ability to arrive by some rough means at a certain
conclusion to a given problem, which conclusion would in every instance
be approximately the same that better trained mathematicians would
reach by mathematics.

By the time the bridge was finished, indeed from the time (1868) when
his first report for it made a decided stir in the scientific world,
both at home and abroad, Eads was a very well-known engineer. In that
same year a visit to Europe for his health's sake gave him the
opportunity to interview a French steel company, through whom he met a
famous bridge-builder, and was led to examine the piers of the bridge
then being constructed at Vichy; and it was there that he found his new
ideas for caissons. Going home, by way of England, he explained his
plans to the engineers there, and was by them proposed as a member of
the Royal Society. Even at home, in his own adopted State, he was not
without recognition; for in 1872 the University of Missouri conferred
upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. From the general of engineers he
received a request for suggestions for improvements in guns; and from
his work on the subject of Naval Defenses it is plain that his mind
still found time to run on this favorite topic.

In 1874 the bridge was finished. After it had satisfactorily stood the
severe tests put upon it, it was formally opened on the 4th of July.
The celebrations of that day were the first public outburst of approval
given to Eads's work. And to-day the strong and graceful bridge stands
as his most beautiful and lasting monument. And as even the great
tornado of 1896 was unable to do the piers any serious damage, they are
likely to last indefinitely, and thus make the bridge "endure," as its
builder said, "as long as it is useful to man."

To Saint Louis it has been so useful that while on the one hand the
growth of the city was the cause of its being built, on the other it
has been one great cause of the continued growth and prosperity of the
city. But it had even broader results than that. "It made a radical
change in the conditions of transportation East and West,