Raymond S. Spears

“ You can’t go ahead just exactly the way you want to, but must consider the power of certain people and follow the line of least resistance."
When they had walked six or seven miles up and down the levee, Kalas took Sibley into one of the house-boats and they had a river supper with the shanty-boater, a short, chunky river-man who could cook as well as a woman, and who listened more than he talked, at first. ”

“ By and by Kalas grinned a little.
"When you are helping somebody else, in times like these especially, it’s government business. We drop all our own little personal affairs, and everybody, black and white, young and old, turns to tasks for the common good. You don’t know the names of half the people you brought out of the overflow yesterday, do you?" ”

“ It’s all woods. The people on the west side can build their levee right up to the river bank, and we can revet it, to keep it from caving, but that crowds the current over into those woods, there, and wears away those banks—and look at it! See that current coming out of the woods over there? Well, that’s where Reelfoot crevasse waters are coming through Reelfoot Lake, through the Scatters.
"They’ve brought their guns," Kalas remarked, as the night watch of the levees came on duty. "If they hadn’t, that levee wouldn’t last through the next night, because somebody would blow—um-m! ”

“ We’re working night and day for people we never have seen, nor heard of, and never shall see again, probably. It’s often that way with big work; the best you do is often for people who don’t know you did it. ”

“ How high would the levees have to be to hold it? Why, there isn’t a hydraulic engineer in the world who would dare to tell you! And if the Missouri sand and gravel are filling up the lower river-bottoms, the way some claim—um-m! ”