But they all seemed parts of a
beautiful romance to him. Neale saw through the eyes of golden
ambition and illimitable dreams.
And not for a moment of that endless ride, with interminable stops,
did he weary of the two hundred and sixty miles of rails laid that
year, and of the forty miles of the preceding year. Then came Omaha,
a beehive--the making of a Western metropolis!
Neale plunged into the bewildering turmoil of plans, tasks, schemes,
land-grants, politics, charters, inducements, liens and loans,
Government and army and State and national interests, grafts and
deals and bosses--all that mass of selfish and unselfish motives, all
that wealth of cunning and noble aims, all that congested assemblage
of humanity which went to make up the building of the Union Pacific.
Neale was a dreamer, like the few men whose minds had first given
birth to the wonderful idea of a railroad from East to West. Neale
found himself confronted by a singularly disturbing fact. However
grand this project, its political and mercenary features could not
be beautiful to him. Why could not all men be right-minded about a
noble cause and work unselfishly for the development of the West and
the future generations? It was a melancholy thing to learn that men
of sincere and generous purpose had spent their all trying to raise
the money to build the Union Pacific; on the other hand, it was a
satisfaction to hear that many capitalists with greedy claws had
ruined themselves in like efforts.
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