Robert Maitland Brereton Reminiscences of an Old English Civil Engineer, 1858-1908

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. This book of personal reminiscences, observations and experiences of an English civil engineer may, I trust, serve to interest some of my old and young friends and acquaintances in the progress that has been made in the material betterment of human life since the commencement of the Railway Age in the first half of the last century. It may also, I hope, serve to encourage the rising generation of the profession, in every branch of their calling, to persevere in the pursuit of useful knowledge from the fount of nature and to see that their foundations of knowledge are of the best and most reliable materials. The present age is one of the fast moving and electric-motor predisposition, in which safe and wholesome foundations are apt to be too much scamped. In North America, more especially, I have found fakement of every kind and false pretensions in every professional calling more or less prevalent and injurious to the public weal. The too ardent desire to get-rich-quick, regardless of conscience, has a lowering tendency on the physical, moral and spiritual tone of man. The period on which I entered into professional life would naturally appear a very slow one to this twentieth century mind; but it was a safe, sound, honest and thoroughly reliable one. The profession of the civil engineer, at all times and in all generations possesses the highest ideal of any other in relation to the material progress and well-being of human life on earth. The more that the civil engineer studies nature's laws, actions and reactions, visible and occult, the more useful member of the social and industrial life of the community he becomes. I believe fully in both the beneficent and the malevolent effects of environment on the young mind. The careful study of environment is too much neglected by parents, educators and employers. I believe thoroughly in wholesome recreations for mind and body in old and young. I have always been a lover of cricket, tenn