After standing for a time on the old bridge watching work on the new,
and shuddering, often enough, at the squirrel-like way in which the men
scampered about up there, so far above the water, we walked in and moved
out again upon the partially completed floor of the new bridge. Here it
was necessary to walk on railroad ties, with gaps, six or eight inches
wide, between them. Even had one tried, one could hardly have managed to
squeeze one's body through these chinks; to fall through was impossible;
nevertheless it gave me an uncomfortable feeling in the region of the
stomach to walk out there, seeing the river all the time between the
interstices. When we had progressed for some distance we came to a gap
where, for perhaps a yard, there were no ties--just open space, with the
muddy water shining cold and cruel below. The opening was only about as
wide as the hall of a small New York flat, and heaven knows that to step
across such a hall is easy enough. But this was not so easy. When we
came to the gap I stopped. Mr. Case, the young engineer, who loved all
bridges with a sort of holy passion, and loved this bridge in
particular, was talking as we went along. I liked to hear him talk. He
had been telling us how a thing that is to _be_ strong ought to _look_
strong, too, and from that had got somehow to the topic of expansion and
contraction in bridges, with variations of temperature.
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