The
Question Of The Railway Is Rather One Applying To Canada Than To
The State Of Maine, And I Will Therefore Leave It For The Present.
But the Great Eastern has never been to Portland, and as far as I
know has no intention of going there.
She was, I believe, built
with that object. At any rate, it was proclaimed during her
building that such was her destiny, and the Portlanders believed it
with a perfect faith. They went to work and built wharves
expressly for her; two wharves prepared to fit her two gangways, or
ways of exit and entrance. They built a huge hotel to receive her
passengers. They prepared for her advent with a full conviction
that a millennium of trade was about to be wafted to their happy
port. "Sir, the town has expended two hundred thousand dollars in
expectation of that ship, and that ship has deceived us." So was
the matter spoken of to me by an intelligent Portlander. I
explained to that intelligent gentleman that two hundred thousand
dollars would go a very little way toward making up the loss which
the ill-fortuned vessel had occasioned on the other side of the
water. He did not in words express gratification at this
information, but he looked it. The matter was as it were a
partnership without deed of contract between the Portlanders and
the shareholders of the vessel, and the Portlanders, though they
also have suffered their losses, have not had the worst of it.
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