PROF. FORBES ON "HARNESSING NIAGARA." 203 



perience it is a practical impossibility to keep penstocks under 

 great head from leaking, and the moisture thereby communicated 

 to the atmosphere, as well as that due to the location of the 

 dynamo room at the bottom of a narrow pit one hundred and 

 fifty feet deep, with a torrent carrying a hundred million gallons 

 per hour raging immediately beneath, could not well fail to im- 

 pair the machines' insulation. Since the latter must carry a vast 

 electrical pressure of alternating current, any impairment would 

 be fatal to the maintenance of the plant. An instance occurs to 

 mind in which a generator plant was located on a level with the 

 wheel cases, and this not at the bottom of the pit by any means, 

 but at the top of a draught tube some feet above the level of the 

 surrounding ground, and in which, owing to the moisture unavoid- 

 ably present, the generators had subsequently to be removed. 



It is impossible, without quoting most of the article in ques- 

 tion, to convey an adequate impression of the egotism that per- 

 vades it. A few phrases may, however, be of assistance to an 

 understanding of this. 



" The electrical work which I have carried out has been done 

 at a cost that seems incredible to many." 



" I did not care to go much into society." 



" On such occasions I would write to my millionaires and tell 

 them that if they did not do what I told them," etc. 



" I had a lovely house in parklike grounds." 



" I had a nigger servant." 



" I had thus become well acquainted with the system which 

 Nicola Tesla, a young Montenegrin, was experimenting on," etc. 



We fancy that most people know the name and fame of " the 

 young Montenegrin" a good deal better than th'ey do those of 

 Forbes. 



In fact, the whole article is quite alliterative from the continu- 

 ous repetitions of the first personal pronoun singular. 



In an opening paragraph Prof. Forbes speaks of the produc- 

 tion of the paper under discussion as the result of an attempt to 

 curb a natural tendency to reticence, and, later, in describing the 

 Falls of Niagara, he says, " The most impressive points of view 

 are those that make you feel the smallest." It is not apparent 

 whether the professor himself experienced the sensation, but, if 

 he did, the depression must have been evanescent, for near the end 

 he says that, while his company ascribes his " splendid results " 

 mainly to engineering skill, " I am inclined to believe that they 

 were fully as much the result of an exercise of tact, judgment, 

 and forbearance, combined with firmness qualities which I do 

 not hesitate to say that both the officers of the company and my- 

 self recognized in each other." All of which, while possibly true, 

 is scarcely the utterance of a man hampered by a temperament in 



