Many of the men working on this bridge had worked on the older structure paralleling it.  This was true not only of the laboring men, but of the engineers.  Ralph Modjeski, the consulting engineer at the head of the work (he is, by the way, a son of Madame Modjeska), was chief draughtsman when the earlier structure was designed; W.E.  Angier, assistant chief engineer in the present work, was a field engineer on the first bridge, and it is interesting to know that, in constructing the approach to the old bridge he unearthed a Spanish halbert which, it is thought, may date from the time of De Soto.  These bridge engineers and bridgebuilders move in a large orbit.  Their last job may have been in Mexico, in the far West, or in India; their next may be in France.  Many of the men here, worked on the Blackwell’s Island bridge, on the Quebec bridge (which fell), on the Thebes bridge over the Mississippi, twenty miles above Cairo, on the Vancouver and Portland bridges over the Columbia and Willamette rivers, and on the great Oregon Trunk Railway bridges.

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.  “It isn’t only the steel bridges that do it,” he said.  “Stone arch bridges do it, too.  The crown of the arch rises and falls.  The Greeks and Romans and Egyptians knew that expansion and contraction occurred.  They—­”

While talking he had gone across the gap, stepping lightly upon a stringpiece probably a foot wide, and proceeding over the ties.  Now, however, he ceased speaking and looked back, for I was no longer beside him.  At the gap I had stopped.  I intended to step across, but I did not propose to do so without giving the matter the attention it seemed to me to deserve.