The Panama Canal and Human Souls
A great work is the Panama Canal. Mr. Albert Edwards, writing on "Panama, the Canal, the Country, and the People," gives a very graphic description of its bigness. He simply declares that the dam that is being built is not a dam, but a mountain range, a quarter of a mile wide, a mile and a half long, and high enough to hold the water up to a level of eighty-five feet above the sea,—a tremendous wall, fifteen times as wide as it is high. He summarizes in this way: "The largest dam, the highest locks, the greatest artificial lake, the deepest cut, the biggest machine-shops, the heaviest consumption of dynamite, the most wonderful sanitary system. All these, and others which I forget, are unique,—the top point of human achievement." And yet, and yet, one human soul is worth more than all.