Charles M. Horton

“ With this boat Lake demonstrated to a skeptical world for all time that he was neither a visionary nor a dreamer, but a practical doer among men—an engineer.
Of such stuff, then, were, and are, engineers made. Whether they realized it or not, whether the world at large realized it or not, each represented a noble calling, each was a professional man, each was chiseling his name for all time into the granite foundations of a wonderful profession even yet only in the building—engineering. ”

“ He saw a faint light breaking through the black dome of the sky. As he watched it, it trickled out steadily, like slow-spreading water, filtering slowly through dense banks of clouds, folding them back like the shutter of a giant camera, until the whole eastern sky was a field of gray clouds with frosty edges, between which, coming majestically forward through the green-white billow, appeared finally a moon, big 268 and round and brilliant, casting over the earth a flood of wonderland light, streaming down upon the dunes and flats in mystic sheen, bringing out the desert in soft outline. ”

“ But laymen know nothing about engineering. Indeed, a source of common amusement among engineers is the peculiar fact that the average layman cannot differentiate between the man who runs a locomotive and the man who designs a locomotive. In ordinary parlance both are called engineers. Yet there is a difference between them—a difference as between day and night. For one merely operates the results of the creative genius of the other. This almost universal ignorance as to what constitutes an engineer serves to show to what broad extent the profession of engineering is isolated. ”

“ Yet she did not weaken, and under her vigorous striving, coupled with the jolting of the horse, her tam-o’-shanter flew off, and her hair loosened and fell, streaming out whippingly behind. And then suddenly, struck with terror herself, she cried out in terror.
“Pat!” she burst out. “Pat! Pat!”
But the horse seemed not to hear. Thundering madly forward, he appeared blind as well as fear-stricken, and Helen, suddenly seeing a barb-wire fence ahead, felt herself go faint, for she had never taken a fence, and she knew that Pat never had. She must get control of herself again. ”

“ The inventor is something else—a wilding in the profession—and as such cannot be considered in a paper of this kind, save only as to say that he is the presiding genius among engineers, the Shakespeare or Milton among his kind, a man whose path to the heights is nowhere known of men. The consulting engineer, on the contrary, representing, as he does, the zenith of slowly attained power in some certain branch of engineering, a vantage—point open freely to all, is the embodiment of the goal toward which all graduates should strive. ”

“ A quarter of a mile to his left, on the tiny porch of a lone adobe, sat Skeet under a hat, feet elevated to the porch railing, head turned in a listening attitude, as though heeding a call, or many calls, from the direction of a brick-and-stone structure to the southwest. Everywhere familiar objects, scenes, stray people, caught his eye as he rode slowly out upon the mesa, trying to get his thoughts away from the immediate future, from Helen, his successful return of the horse, and that other thing, his determination to leave this spacious land for ever. ”

“ And he was still in the lead, the sorrel carrying him without seeming effort, and moving steadily away from the others, each long stride gaining half as much ground again as the swinging gait of Pat or the quick and nervous reaching of the little gray. But all were moving at top speed, racing desperately across the desert, leaping sand-dunes, dipping into hollows, mounting eagerly over larger dunes, on and on like the wind, sending up with each fling of hoof swirling clouds of dust and gravel. It was a grim effort.
Such a time comes to but few men. ”

“ The engineer, being as he is a man who views things objectively, notes details in everything that comes under his eye, be it dwelling or automobile, or bookbinding or highway. The layman does not. The layman, outside his work, sees only the thing itself, when looking at it—the general outline. But the engineer, trained to note details in construction, observes detail at a glance, and does it almost subconsciously, if not immediately after leaving school, then assuredly later, after he has been practicing his profession for a time. ”

“ From the corral had come a shrill nicker, the voice of the aged mare. But that was not it! With the outcry, seemingly an answer to the black’s maddened outcry, the black dropped to all-fours again, turning quick ears and eyes in the direction of the sound! What manner of horse was this, anyway? Never before had he seen such a horse! He felt himself go limp.
There is a call in nature that sounds for life against death. ”

“ To build a bridge, to design an automatic machine, to locate and bring to the surface earth's wealth in minerals—surely this is service of a most gratifying kind.
And it pays. The arts rarely pay; science always pays. And engineering being a science, a science in the pursuit of which also man is offered opportunities for the exercise of his creative instincts, like art, is therefore doubly gratifying as a life's work. I know—and it will bear repeating—no other profession that holds so much of bigness and of fullness of life generally. ”

“ It is an 107 outcry of good as against evil–the squawk of a hen to her chicks, the bleat of a sheep to her lambs, the grunt of a sow to her sucklings, the bellow of a cow to her calf, the purr of a cat to her kittens, the whine of a dog to her puppies, the drum of a partridge to her young. A cry from the heart to the heart, an appeal of flesh to its own flesh, it is the world-old mother-call.
And the horse heard this call. He probably did not recognize in it a call of the mother-heart, any more than it was possible for the aged mare to recognize in his outcry the voice of her own flesh. ”

“ The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering, painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry wall—plastering, glazing—the list is endless that as side-plays are possible to the man with an engineering training. ”

“ And Stephen, gazing off thoughtfully toward the tiny mound of fresh earth, and seeing the little woman prostrated with grief upon the grave, knew that Helen, herself bitter with loss, and no doubt needing Pat as much almost as this woman needed her own lost one, would have him do what he wanted to do. And what he wanted to do, felt as if he must do, was to accompany these men, go with them, disabled though he was, and help as best he could to bring down retribution upon the renegades. ”

“ Where there is one engineer who will perjure himself in the fashion as set forth above there are many thousands of engineers who could not be bought for this purpose at any amount of money. The profession of engineering is notably clean; its code of ethics rigidly adhered to; the rights of others, both in and out of the profession, regarded with something akin to sacredness. Engineers, as a body, for instance, possess a peculiarly rigid idea concerning themselves in relation to branches of the profession outside their own and yet intimately close to their own. ”

“ Then came darkness. Shadows crept in from nowhere, stealing over the desert more and more darkly, while, with their coming, birds 11 of the air, seeking safe place for night rest, flitted about in nervous uncertainty. And suddenly in the gathering dusk rose the long-drawn howl of a coyote, lifting into the stillness a lugubrious note of appeal. Then, close upon the echo of this, rose another appeal in the trail close by, the shrill nicker of the mate to the mare.
It awoke Felipe. He sat up quickly, rubbed his eyes dazedly, and peered out with increasing understanding. ”

“ It matters little—save only that he who gets the practical side first is earning his way while getting it, while the man who goes to college is in the majority of cases being supported from outside sources while getting what he wants. But in the end it balances. Merely, the "full" engineer must have both. Having both, he has, literally, the world within his grasp. For engineering is—to repeat—the adapting of discoveries in science and art to the uses of mankind. And both art and science reflect and are drawn from Mother Nature. ”

“ When he was well in the fore, he had found himself crowded to his utmost–over sand-dune, into arroyo, across the level–around him thundering hoofs, panting horses, silent men, all speeding forward in the glorious moonlight. It was a strange awakening, yet he had not entertained thoughts of rebellion, despite the fact that he had not liked the flaying rope, the soft digging heels, the absence of bridle and saddle. ”

“ Civil engineering is a profession which keeps its followers pretty well out in the open. A civil engineer will go long distances, and frequently must, in order to get to his work, and, having reached the scene of his labors, enters upon a rugged outdoor life in camp where he remains until the job is completed. The Panama Canal was a civil-engineering job—probably the largest of its kind ever undertaken—and its success, after failure on the part of another government, is a high tribute to the genius of our own civil engineers. ”

“ They went outside. On the curb, Felipe gazed about him, first with a look of pride, then with an expression of blank dismay. He stepped down off the curb, roused the drowsing mare with a vigorous clap, again looked about him worriedly. After a long moment he left the team, walking out into the middle of the street, and strained his eyes in both directions. Then he returned and, heedless of his new overalls, got down upon his knees, sweeping bleared eyes under the wagon. And finally, with a last despairing gaze in every direction, he sat down upon the curb and buried his face in his arms. ”

“ Then, with the whole east blazing with molten gold, there came the feeling of actual warmth, and with it the full radiance of day–bringing out in minute detail rock and arroyo and verdant growth, and an expanse of desert unbroken by the least vestige of animal life. At this absence of all that which would suggest the presence of life–adobes, corrals, windmills–Pat awoke again to vague uneasiness and fell to pondering his future under these men, whom he now instinctively knew pursued ways outside the bounds of the civilization of his past. ”

“ Beneath the sun the horizon, an immense girdle, swept round in unbroken line, pulsating. The turquoise sky hung low, spotless and shimmering, brooding, dipping smoothly down to the horizon and to the long sand-dune running to northeast and southwest. Skirting this dune, reaching to it out of the east, then swerving off to the south beyond, lay the almost unbroken expanse, the desert within the desert, its dead, flat, monotonous brown relieved here and there with alternating sagebrush and cactus and amole, stretching back a distance of a hundred miles to the shack. ”

“ Then came the crack of a whip, loud creaking of greaseless wheels, the voice of Felipe in lusty demand, all as the outfit set out up the trail toward the timber-slopes. But not till the earth was still again, the cloud of dust in the trail completely subsided, did the colt turn away from the bars and seek his mother, and then with a look in his soft-blinking eyes that told of concentrated pondering on these mysteries of life. ”

“ A COLT IS BORN
It was high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing color, from pink to gray, from gray to black–gloom that precedes tropical showers. ”

“ Then once more the voice of his mistress changed suddenly and became light, even gay, leaving Pat, as he himself was turned around, a very much mystified horse.
Yet this gaiety did not last. When they were well on their way back toward the ranch, with the sun higher and brighter in the heavens, and the trail correspondingly whiter and more dazzling to the eye, he found himself listening to grave tones again–the voice of the young man. He talked steadily now, his flow of words always tense, though occasionally interrupted by the other with a quiet rejoinder. ”