A rough road was made. We
brought up gas from Cheaping and electricity from Woking, which place
I found also afforded a friendly workshop for larger operations than
I could manage. I had the luck also to find a man who seemed my
heaven-sent second-in-command--Cothope his name was. He was a
self-educated-man; he had formerly been a sapper and he was one of the
best and handiest working engineers alive. Without him I do not think I
could have achieved half what I have done. At times he has been not so
much my assistant as my collaborator, and has followed my fortunes to
this day. Other men came and went as I needed them.
I do not know how far it is possible to convey to any one who has not
experienced it, the peculiar interest, the peculiar satisfaction that
lies in a sustained research when one is not hampered by want of money.
It is a different thing from any other sort of human effort. You
are free from the exasperating conflict with your fellow-creatures
altogether--at least so far as the essential work goes; that for me is
its peculiar merit.
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