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you never learn that a road on any corporation being praised, & talks of it spoken well of in the newspapers etc. was no sign of its prosperity or favorable prospects, but exactly the contrary! It is puffed because it needs it. These sort of things are done on purpose for effect & because they are paid for. No unfinished road in N.E. perhaps has been more or higher praised "in the papers" for months past than Vt. & Mass. Such roads as Worcester, Fitchburg, Lowel, Eastern, do not need anything of the kind. But for the At. & St. Le. it is probably necessary that folks should have a good opinion of it as well as Vt. & Mass. if possible. This "Mobile & Ohio" Rail Road offers about the best prospects to the young engineer. It will eventually be perhaps the most important Rail Road in the world, half a dozen years job at least; under one of the best his friends & followers, say, the best of Engineers of U.S. Nearly 500 miles long, main trunk, Mobile to Cairo, & R. Roads connected with it innumerable under old Capt Childe, John Childe, of Springfield. A large party just going on to commence on it. I went down to Springfield yesterday to see the Casting. He had sent up for Leonard one of my Vt. & Mass. coworkers, but one of Childe's old men, I went down with him. He, however (appears to be a man of perfect system) had had his plans all laid, when he came on from South; nothing to do but write to those he had selected, & they coming, his parties were all full. -- However -- I was well recommended to him, he liked my appearance; filed away my name etc. and probably run a pretty considerable risk of being called upon sometime to take some post under him, somewhere between the Gulf of Mexico & British America.