Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1871 — Trouble from Want of Calculation. [ARTICLE]

Trouble from Want of Calculation.

We are forcibly reminded of the incident in the popular narrative of Robinson Crusoe when he built a boat, and on its completion found that he could not get it to the water, by the fact Just discovered, that Rothennel’a great picture of the battle of Gettysburg, painted for the State of Pennsylvania, can not be accommodated in any rhom of the Capitol at HdtrisWurg. This little trouble likewise recalls the memory of a want of foresight in a ship builder who constructed, many years ago, at Dublin, the first steamer constructedin Ireland. The vessel was very beautiful inoutline and finish, but when launched in the basin adjacent to the shipyard, it was found that she was much to large to pass through the locks in order to enter the Lissy. As those locks happened to be built of enormous blocks of granite, dowellod together with iron, and, moreover, as it was necessary to obtain special permission from the government do temporarily remove them, it may be Judged what most have been the chagrin of those concerned. But she had to come out, cost what it wonld--«nd cost it did. A StaMhtß Mgate wm once oowtructod in

the midst of a forest near St. Petersburg for the sake of having the timber at hand, and it was not until she was completed that the fact dawned upon the builder that a canal would have to be cut through a hill to float her to the Neva. So much for want of forethought which shrewd people are apt to term “calculation." — Technologist.