“First we made ourselves into a council. Next we voted ourselves full powers to do what we liked in managing the bridge.
“The merchants who were regular users of the bridge and who passed and repassed with their trains upon an average once a month, were to be free of toll on condition that they should pay an annual subscription to the upkeep of the structure. It came to an average, for each of their beasts of burden, to about one-quarter of the public toll, and for each of their servants to less than one-half.
“The common folk of the town and the villages, the herdsmen and all the humbler multitude which used the bridge in less lucrative fashion were to pay a toll double the original, which, after all, was only fair when one considered that they were compelled to use the bridge as there was now no other passage across the stream. I should add that the local authorities which sat with us upon this council, after drawing up the ordinances, passed a local bylaw full of common sense and the spirit of order. In this bylaw they forbade the use of any boats whatsoever for the crossing of the water, under the excellent plea that men had in the past occasionally been drowned from these and that, anyhow, there was now a good bridge and no necessity for this old-fashioned and backward kind of travel.
“People were also forbidden to swim the river between sunset and sunrise upon the grounds of security and police control, and between sunrise and sunset upon the grounds of decency.
“After the new regulations had been passed the gates were strengthened, regular officers were appointed to take the toll and I was public-spirited enough to permit my own servants to be withdrawn and these officials to be named (and paid) by the new council, retaining to myself no more than the right of receiving the tolls and taking on of course the burden of upkeep as against the sums which I received from the regular merchants. I also reserved to myself the right, whenever the council or the local authorities thought it necessary to have the bridge strengthened or repaired or painted, or ornamented, or decorated upon feast days, or covered with an awning during the great heats, to take up the contract for all these services at a price to be agreed upon between myself and the council and the local authorities, at the head of whom was my dear old friend the sheik.
“When all these arrangements had been made, the thing was on a proper basis and formed, I am glad to say, for many other similar arrangements a precedent, in which the advantages of the public and a proper return on capital were both considered. My ‘Bridge council’ as it was called was copied in many another enterprise in those parts, to not a few of which I was admitted as a director.
“But one must march with the times. It could not be denied that this conservative and established way of recouping expenses and interest by tolls, excellent in its time, no doubt, had its drawbacks. There was something rather absurd in these progressive days (such was the phrase used to me by my friend the sheik of the place—which was now growing under the influence of my bridge to be a very large town), there was something rather absurd in the spectacle of gates put up to block that very passage which had only been erected for the convenience of the community! What would not posterity think of us if they heard that we built a bridge and then put up gates to interfere with its constant and easy use? It was a burden also upon the community that officials should have to be employed at either end checking payments, keeping books and all the rest of it.
“What was worse, there seemed to be some leakage. Officials could not always be trusted to make an exact return (for they were of the baser sort at a small salary). It was suspected that their relatives and friends had been allowed to cross free of toll, for we could not keep a big watch at night and there was I fear a good deal of illicit use of the bridge.
“All of this, quite apart from the bad example it gave and the feeling of disorder it created, was also a source of anxiety to those who were concerned with the finance of the enterprise. The feeling grew rapidly—at least it grew very strongly in me and I made every effort to spread it in others—that progress and sundry other virtues with which the Plain prided itself (as against the half-barbaric people of the mountains) demanded that all these anomalies should cease, and that the simple policy of ‘The Free Bridge’ should triumph.”
As the aged merchant described the last stage of his adventure his face took on an animated look; he spoke with decision; there was a freedom in his gesture which recalled his old oratorical triumphs when he had occasion as a younger man to combine the practice of commerce, investment and finance with the public speeches which had rendered him famous. He seemed, for the moment, not so much the merchant as the senator, the Free Bridgeite of the great old days, and his nephews could not but admire the lofty air, the direct glance, the eloquent vibration of voice which accompanied this mood.
“I for my part,” continued the old gentleman, now transformed by the recollection of his part
