One Thanksgiving morning I received by express a beautiful copy of Wordsworth, which I had bought in Boston the day before.

Just as I was opening it the morning mail was brought in.

I opened the book at random and turned to Wadsworth's poem, "The Highland Broach." My eye caught the following lines: Lo! Ships from seas by nature barred, Mount along ways by man prepared; Along far stretching vales, whose streams Seek other seas, their canvas gleams, And busy towns grow up on coasts Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts.
I turned by eye from these verses to the mail in which was a copy of a New York illustrated journal containing an account of the Eads ship-railway.
The inscription in Eads's "History of the Jetties," above referred to, is as follows: To Hon.

George F.Hoar, who, as a member of the House Committee which matured the Jetty Act, prepared the _first report_ in its favor, this book is presented; with the assurance that his unfaltering support of the enterprise through all its struggles, entitled him to a prominent place among the statesmen to whom the producers in the Valley of the Mississippi are most largely indebted.
JAS B.EADS Washington, D.C., February 1881 I had the pleasure of receiving a telegram from New Orleans shortly after the completion of the jetties saying that a loaded steamer, drawing between twenty-seven and twenty-eight feet of water, had safely passed through them to New Orleans.
The Commission appointed by the Government insisted upon having the jetties constructed at the south pass of the Mississippi River.

This Captain Eads strenuously resisted and urged the superiority of the southwest pass for the purpose.