REASONS FOR LEAVING THE PUBLIC SERVICE. 101 



clitional in the army. My brief experience of the 

 civil service gave me sufficient grounds for the form- 

 ation of this opinion. As long as my superiors under- 

 stood nothing of telegraphy, they let me work entirely 

 unchecked, and limited their intervention and instruct- 

 ions to questions of financial importance. That soon 

 changed in the degree in which my immediate superior 

 in office, assessor, afterwards counsellor Nottebohm, 

 acquired knowledge of the subject during the progress 

 of the work. People were assigned to me of whom I could 

 make no use. technical arrangements ordered which I 

 knew to be bad. in short frictions and differences 

 occurred, which marred the pleasure in my work. 



Again, the weakness of the insulated conducting 

 wires, lying unprotected in the loose soil of the rail- 

 way embankments, already began to show itself with 

 increasing distinctness. Faults in the insulation made 

 their appearance, which were only discovered and re- 

 moved with difficulty: breaches of continuity in the 

 wire without loss of insulation occurred, which often 

 only lasted a few hours, and whose position therefore 

 it was difficult to determine. The search for and re- 

 pairing of these defects were commonly entrusted to 

 inexperienced people, who cut the line in numberless 

 places to confine the fault within limits, and by unskilful 

 diggings and joinings paved the way for new defects, 

 which were then again attributed to me and the system. 

 Notwithstanding, with an almost blind confidence, new 

 undertakings of the same description were entered upon. 

 It may perhaps have been the political circumstances 



