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of taking a party of fifty or a hundred men to
California, for two years service in the mines.
Everett was delighted with the prospect of adventure involved in such an enterprise, and wrote home to his friends for aid and advice; but the project ultimately failed.
He graduated in 1849, and at once found employment at engineering on the
Boston Water-Works, under
Mr. Chesborough.
Soon afterwards, he obtained a leveller's place on the
Cleveland,
Columbus, and Ashtabula Railroad.
He thus describes his first experience of out-door life:—
February 3, 1850.
Thank Heaven, I can support myself now; and if it is a pittance I live on, it is at least earned by my own right arm, which does not snarl and tell me I am extravagant, whenever I ask it therefor.
And so
au diable with money matters.
Well, it's glorious, after all, going about in these old woods, with trees which seem to have borne the brunt of the tempests for a thousand years. Huge shafts, with buttress-like roots, and a flooring of Nature's own mosaic.
Though our feet are wet and our hands cold, though we anticipate the sun and work like hodmen, there's a luxury in it which I can feel, but not analyze.
You might not think it poetry, but it is,—this wading through the swamps watching the clouds.
We have nothing at the
East to compare with these glorious clouds.
We left off work last night about a mile and a half from the tavern where we now are. I started, along with about six of the party, and trudged through the swamp for a mile and a half or two miles, and then found ourselves four miles from the tavern, in a driving snow-storm, dark, and the walking not fit to be called walking.
We came home very much fatigued.
This was the beginning of a Western residence of more than ten years, with but a few short visits to the home of his youth.
He was successively employed on the Pacific Railroad (
St. Louis), the
Maysville and
Lexington, Kentucky, the Maysville and Big Sandy, the
Louisville and
Frankfort,— always as assistant or resident engineer, but with always increasing salary and responsibilities.
At this time he was in splendid physical condition.
His frame was large and powerful, his health was always good, and he was almost always very light-hearted and careless
