The Completion of the Pacific Railroad

There was a smack of theatrical effect in the announcement that the Pacific Railroad would be completed by driving a spike of gold into a sleeper of laurel, each blow of the sledge being simultaneously recorded in the telegraph offices of New York and San Francisco; but there is an excuse for flourish and display, and it will be hard for the most bombastic speaker to exaggerate the importance of the iron band which connects the Atlantic and the Pacific, and as it is the noblest Work which Western civilization has successfully accomplished, must hold the first place in the material achievements of the century. It matters but little whether there has been stealing and plundering during the building of the road; whether ten men or a thousand have been enriched by contracts or place. All that we need remember is that the Pacific Railroad is completed, that eleven hundred miles of road are added to our gigantic railway system, and that the locomotive which pants in the streets of the cities of the East is never silent until it reaches the shores of the Golden State.