One Who Knows The Mississippi Will Promptly Aver -
Not Aloud, But To Himself - That Ten Thousand River Commissions, With The
Mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream,
cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say
To it, Go here, or Go there,
and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar
its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over,
and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken
words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere;
they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since
they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him,
it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and
wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work
at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we
do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like
impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission
might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make
them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable
conduct.
I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters; and I
give here the result, stenographically reported, and therefore to be
relied on as being full and correct; except that I have here and there
left out remarks which were addressed to the men, such as 'where in
blazes are you going with that barrel now?' and which seemed to me to
break the flow of the written statement, without compensating by adding
to its information or its clearness.
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