"
As he said, with just pride, Louis Favre had, indeed, before becoming
the first contractor of public works in the world, lived for a long time
in lumber yards. The years that so many other better instructed but less
learned persons, who were afterward to gladly accept his authority, had
given up to their studies, Favre had passed in the humble shop of his
father, a carpenter at Chene, a small village at a half league from
Geneva. It soon becoming somewhat irksome for him in the village, he
left the paternal workbench to start on what is called the "tour of
France." He was then eighteen years of age. Three years afterward, he
was undertaking small works. It was not long ere he was remarked by the
engineers conducting the latter, and he was soon called to give his
advice on all difficult questions. Between times, Favre had courageously
studied the principal bases of such sciences as were to be useful to
him. In the evening, he made up at the public school what was lacking in
his early instruction; not that he hoped to make a complete study for an
engineer, but only to learn the indispensable. He was, before all
things, a practical man, who made up for the enforced insufficiency of
his technical knowledge by a _coup d'oeil_ of surprising accuracy.
Here it may be said to me that the piercing of the great St. Gothard
Tunnel was accompanied by considerable loss.
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