| Show the panama canal despite the jeers of the ignorant and incredulous and the misrepresentations of the malignant and interested te M je 3 lesseps goes right on with his great work on the panama isthmus and judging the future by the past of this great engineers engin bers achievements it is quite safe to predict that his promise to complete the canal before 1892 will be fulfilled he encountered the same ridicule and interested opposition when constructing ting the suez canal twenty five years ago but he got there eli all the same all great enterprises have hard to fight the hosts of ignorance superstition and interest when steam navigation of the ocean was first suggested and old aea dogs laughed the visionary fools to beom who proposed it and the so called scientists of the day elaborately demonstrated its utter impracticability when the steamer savannah after a voyage of miles she sailed from savannah ga appeared off wizards Xi point the british people were enjoying an essay by the learned dr the foremost scientific man of the day in which it was very clearly shown that steam could never be profitably used as a propelling power for sea going vessels when the first message over the first wire ever erected flashed from baltimore to washington the memorable words selected by the daughter of the inventor what hath god wrought the instrument was surrounded by a doubting crowd of prominent men very few of whom could be convinced even after the receipt of the message that it was not some sort of trick of legerdemain when tho first pacific railroad was suggested authorities on railroading were quite agreed that such a road could never pay this was only thirty years ago and now there are five pacific lines in operation and pay fair dividends all of which seem to prove that fluek and eldell when backed by money can accomplish almost anything in the physical field of human enterprise |
