"That's admirable!" said the Doctor, with enthusiasm. "Now, I'll venture some suggestions. How much mathematics do you know?"
"Algebra, elementary and higher, and a little geometry."
"Good!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Now, I propose this plan: You shall live with me in the little house that I'm going to build, and serve as the chief engineer's executive at a fair salary from the company. I'll teach you all I know of general chemistry and geology of evenings, and I'll interest the chief engineer to teach you trigonometry, the calculus and surveying. In the meantime you'll be learning the practical part of engineering in your daily work, and when you go off to that scientific school its faculty will have little to do except to take your fees, record your name, and grant you your diploma."
Six years later Camp Venture mine was, in the phrase of the investors, "one of the richest paying enterprises" in that part of the country. Dr. Latrobe had become president of the company after the death of his father, and the enterprise owed much of its success, as every body agreed, to the skill, the energy, and the wonderful common sense of its chief engineer, Thomas Ridsdale, Esq., graduate of a noted school of mines.
Tom was only twenty-four years old then, but he had always been accounted "old for his age," and as he stood upon the bluff, contemplated the long line of cars loaded with the product of Camp Venture mine and planned new side tracks in order that cars enough might stand there to receive the other waiting cargoes of the concentrated sunshine of thousands of years ago, "Little Tom," grown now to six feet two inches in his stockings, was satisfied with his life and his work.
BOOKS FOR BOYS
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
THE LAST OF THE FLATBOATS. A Story of the Mississippi and Its Interesting Family of Rivers.
CAMP VENTURE. A Story of the Virginia Mountains. Adventures among the "Moonshiners."
THE BALE MARKED CIRCLE X. A Blockade-Running Adventure.
JACK SHELBY. A Story of the Indiana Backwoods.
LONG KNIVES. The Story of How They Won the West. A Tale of George Rogers Clark's Expedition.
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI. The Story of a Carolina Cruise. A Tale of Sport and Adventure.