he, sitting on a stone lock in the evening gloaming, "I
ought to have been a lawyer. Not that I am not the greatest theoretical
engineer in the country, but my legal genius interposes, and I sue the
villains who employ me."

Here he gave the melancholy negro a violent shaking, who took it as
stolidly as a bottle of medicine shaken by the doctor.

"Yes, you sued Judge Ben Wright and he nonsuited you."

"I tell you a new axiom, Clayton," the earnest engineer cried, putting
the negro down on his hams and sitting on him; "whoever employs genius
has to be a scoundrel. In the nature of their relations it is so. He
deflects genius from its full expression, absorbs the virtue from it,
and is a fraud."

Here he kicked the negro underneath him, who hardly protested.

"Well, then," spoke Judge Custis, "as Clayton is a man of genius, and
you employ him--"

"I'm a scoundrel, of course," Randel exclaimed. "His sense of law and
right must yield to my ideas. Now look at this canal! Had I not been
obliged to defer to the soulless corporation which employed me, I would
have dug it to the depth that the tides of the two bays would have
filled it, instead of damming up the creeks for feeders, and pumping
water into it by steam-pumps. Then the war-vessels of the country could
go through, and the channel would be purged by every tide."

He stood up and put his foot on the negro, to the amusement of the boys
gathering around.

"John Fitch, the engineer," said John M. Clayton, "left a curious will;
it begins, 'To William Rowan, my trusty friend, I bequeath my Beaver
Hat.'"

Judge Custis's countenance fell, thinking of another hat which had
entered his family.

The barge on which they embarked had numerous passengers, and soon came
to a small lock-town and turn-bridge, and, a few miles beyond, entered
upon a serious piece of work, leaving the trough of a creek, of which
the canal had previously availed itself, and cutting through the low
ridge of the peninsula, which, to Judge Custis, seemed almost
mountainous. He was of that patriotic opulence, just short of
imagination, which rejoiced in public works, and this little canal, only
fourteen miles long, was, with two or three exceptions, the only
achieved work in the Union, turnpikes and bridges omitted. Built by the
national government, by three of the states it connected, and by private
subscription, it had involved two and a quarter million dollars of
expense--no light burden whe