Officers of the navy, the army, the bench, governors, mayors, engineers, bankers, and others innumerable accepted or declined. The common people prepared to turn out in a body.
The enthusiasm was so pervasive, that even the children felt the thrill of the epochal day. The RoBards youngsters, little Keith and his sister Immy, were feverish. The very baby at Patty’s breast seemed to beat the air and crow like chanticleer at the mention of the Fourteenth of October.
The one sure bribe for good behavior was a promise to go to New York for the parade; the one effective punishment a threat of being left at home.
Hardly an account of the aqueduct or the festival omitted Chalender’s name, and RoBards grew so accustomed to it that he all but forgot the horror it had once involved.
He was himself infected by the glory of the hour. It was like seeing one of the Pyramids dedicated, or the Sphinx christened.
Time that makes us grateful for our defeats and turns our victories to chagrin dealt so with RoBards. Though he had hampered the work and denounced its trespass on the rights of the landholders, he felt glad now that he and they had been defeated. Chalender was gracious in his triumph, and felt all the more genial since the victory had been enhanced by the high mettle of the opponents.
So everybody was happy and proud, and the aqueduct itself took on something of the sanctity of a long, long temple, a source of health and security and of unbounded future growth.
RoBards spoke of this to Patty and said that the names of the men who had fought this long battle through would be immortal.
“Who are they?” she said with a disconcerting abruptness.
And to save him he could not think of them, though he knew the names of many picturesque criminals, and of persons whose only importance was some fashionable prestige. He knew the names of many who had pounded out a little poem or braided a piece of clever fiction. He knew the names of manufacturers of popular soaps and razor strops, but he could not recall the giants who had wrested the rocks from the hills and laid down the new channel for the river that would redeem the chief city of the continent.