union. The danger was
greatly increased by the abandonment of the scheme to hold California to
the Union by building a railroad through the mountainous wilderness of
the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. The chief engineer who surveyed
the route said that it could not be done because of the great cost.
Three great financiers had been consulted and refused to undertake the
hopeless task. The great Massachusetts Senator told Mr. Lincoln that
there was just one man who could do that gigantic feat. The Senator said
to Lincoln: "If that Congressman makes up his mind to do it, and it is
left to him, he will do it. He is a careful man, but he has a will which
seems to be irresistible." President Lincoln sent for the Congressman
and said: "A railroad to California now will be more than an army, and
it will be an army--in the saving of the Union. Will you build it?" The
Congressman asked for three weeks to think. Before the end of that time
he asked the Secretary of War to take his card to President Lincoln,
then in Philadelphia; on the card was written, "I will." What a
startlingly fascinating story from real life is the history of that
mighty undertaking. Now, when the traveler passes the highest point on
that transcontinental railroad, 8,550 feet above the sea at Sherman,
Wyoming, and lifts his hat before the monument erected to the memory of
that civil nobleman and hero, he is paying his respect to the
self-giving heart and mighty brain of the boy who conquered _the three
links_.

It may not be necessary to multiply illustrations of this vital
question, but no one who lived in the journalistic circles of Washington
subsequent to the Civil War can forget the power and fame of that
feminine literary genius who, as the Washington correspondent of the
_New York Independent_, wrote such brilliant letters. The fact that she
bore the same name as the Congressman we have mentioned, though no
relative of his, does not account for this reference to her. She was
nearly thirty-three years old when a divorce and the breaking up of her
home left her poor, ill, and under the cloud of undeserved disgrace. Her
acquaintances predicted obscurity, daily toil with her hands, and a life
of lonely sorrow. Poor victim of sad circumstances! She had but little
education, and had been too full of cares to read the books of the day.
Her start in the profession which she later so gracefully and forcibly
adorned was the foremost topic in corners and clo