.png)
Everyone, from time to time, experiences one of those perfect days when everything seems to fall into place, a day that exceeds the most optimistic expectations—the kind of day that persuades one that ones guardian angel is working overtime. One of the most extraordinary of these “perfect days” is recorded by Prof. C. E. Sherman, longtime chairman of the Civil Engineering Department of Ohio State University at Columbus, in his book Land of Kingdom Come:
In 1909 while preparing the originals for the Ohio State Highway Atlas, we were hard put to it to get maps of the southwestern counties. . . . The United States Geological Survey had not yet mapped this area, and the only suitable data ... to be had been in the form of old county atlases about 15 inches square and half an inch thick. ...
Much correspondence had secured the data for every county in the state except Pike and Highland. These two could not be had, nor could I discover by all my written inquiry whether any maps of these regions existed. In the absence of any data at all, it would be quite a task to make a complete survey of all the roads in a county. In fact, it was out of the question with the appropriation we had. So I left Columbus, resolved to search the county seats and the homesteads nearby, for a week or two, if necessary, to get the lost data. We also wanted a good map of the Ohio River for adjusting the data we had already gathered.
The following events then happened during the next 12 hours, that Saturday in August: Taking an early morning train for Cincinnati, I found an excellent map of the Ohio at the first place visited, the United States Engineers Office. . . . Proceeding at once to Highland County, I had to wait at Norwood for the Hillsboro car. When I happened to mention the nature of my quest to the ticket agent at Norwood, he said, “There’s an old book like that in the rear room, I think.” We searched the dusty pile together, and fished out the long-sought Highland County Atlas!
Two ways then offered of reaching Pike’s capital that afternoon. I ate lunch and took the B.& O. [railroad] to Chillicothe. In the short wait there, for the N. & W. south, I strolled up the street to call on an old friend, if perchance he were in town. He came toward me as I started, just as if the whole thing had been prearranged. After our chat, as I was mounting the southbound train, a gentleman who had written the day before, hailed me. As his letter was of a nature much more easily answered orally, it was gratifying to give him the immediate information.
I was personally acquainted with but two citizens of Waverly [the county seat of Pike County], one a mechanical, the other a civil engineering student, but hardly expected either of them to be in town. When I stepped off at Waverly, the mechanical engineer stepped off the car in front, and as we walked toward the hotel together he said he would send around the other man if he were home. I had just leisurely finished dinner at seven o’clock when Gehres appeared. Did he know of any Pike County map? “No, but perhaps father does,” he said, “and here comes father now.” Mr. Gehres, senior, said he thought the county auditor had one. The auditor came walking up the street as he spoke. After introductions, and in accord with the happenings of the whole day, he took us across the street to his office in the courthouse, where hung a fine old map of the county. I had written the county surveyor of that same county, but he knew nothing of this map.
I am actually afraid to record here all the incidents of that trip that I have on the memorandum here before me. It would be straining credulity too much. . … You see, every step taken during the day was as much to the purpose as if planned with foreknowledge. I had gone directly to the Ohio River maps . . . Had gone directly to a Highland County Atlas without knowing one existed, by the shortest traveled route; and when from that point two ways might be taken, I had chosen the one that led most directly to the remaining data sought.
Even the smallest incident, during the day, seemed to fit perfectly into a harmonious whole. I suppose much of this was psychological. I had for months been on the quest for all the data for the state, and when this last, the hardest problem began to unravel so easily, it put me in a humor to notice only favoring circumstances, such for instance as the following:
The Norwood agent didn’t want to sell, but would gladly lend his book—this saved us the purchase price; my Chillicothe friend was just leaving town on the car after instead of the car before my arrival; again, the tracing paper I picked up at random that morning, before leaving home, just fitted the large Pike County wall map; then again, the one person that I hoped might be at home to help at Waverly if needed, was on the spot to make the Pike County tracing. Who would expect to get into the courthouse in a strange town on Saturday night? Yet along came just the right persons, at just the right time, to take me to that map, which I didn’t know existed. The train from Chillicothe to Waverly was full of men excursionists; they filled the aisles, yet as I stepped on, a seat was vacant for me, and I had uninterrupted privacy and comfort all the way down to reflect on the events of the day. I retired that night with the sensation of having experienced a perfect day.
SOURCE:
C. E. Sherman, quoted in Alan Vaughan, Incredible Coincidence, pp.92-94
コメント