Note 119 — Chapter XI

It is wonderful how ingenious men can be when they are out of temper, and want to vent anger and disappointment. A writer in a professional paper, from whom better things might have been expected, and who has fairly and honestly won reputation in fields where imaginery grievances have not warped and overset truthful judgment, argues that because Mr. Fell’s engine must go up the mountain by the centre rail system, it is most costly, and therefore practically useless on account of the great loss of power occasioned by the necessity of the engine coming down again. Nearly as much power, says the writer, is thus lost in the descent as is required to get the train up to the summit. This maybe so, and very probably is so, but is not this loss the penalty that has to be paid for crossing the mountain at all. If the writer have crossed the Mont Cenis he could not fail to have seen that instead of the eight or ten horses or mules that are required to draw a carriage or a waggon up the pass, only two are required in the descent for the former, and one for the latter, all the other horses coming down the mountain loadless. After all, the disease is not half so bad as the remedy suggested for curing it—twenty-four to thirty miles of tube or tunnel, to say nothing of the mode of propulsion through it.