His convention speech is a good sample of his style. He was so painstaking that even in private letters he would insert words and change sentences and sometimes rewrite. There are first draughts with excisions of whole half pages, for he sought conciseness. He sought also a certain rhythm or grace or forcefulness, it is hard to tell exactly what, since in his letters it often resulted in a rather self-conscious formality or a stiff playfulness, and in his speeches in a prettiness or a floweriness of style. He sought too carefully. Probably in delivery the speeches sounded better than we should imagine. In reading them, they seem florid. That was, however, the favorite style of the time. And while, by overdoing it, he often seems to lose force, he is almost always clear and always entirely logical. In contrast to his speeches his professional reports are models: simple and complete, written not faultlessly perhaps, but with a limpidity which makes one interested even in dry technical details. One of his most marked talents, often noted, was the ability to explain an abstruse subject so that it would be quite clear to anybody. And this he did nearly as well in writing as by word of mouth. He thus made clear his remarkable plans for the bridge; for in 1867 the long talked of bridge at Saint Louis was at last begun. In 1833, when Eads had arrived at the town, it had about 10,000 inhabitants. Though already seventy years old, it had not advanced very far beyond its original state of a French trading-post. With the introduction of steam and the waking up of the country, the growth of Saint Louis was rapid. In 1867 it had about 100,000 people. Despite a commanding situation, it could be seen that a struggle would have to be made for it to maintain the leadership among the river towns. As early as 1839 there had been a project for a highway bridge; and we are told that "the city fathers stood aghast" at an estimated cost of $736,600. In the following years there were several more abortive schemes for bridging, one of which, it is even said, would have been carried out, had not its projector died. Perhaps it is as well that he never lived to try it, for until Eads no one seems to have realized how enormous the undertaking was. Probably few others, realizing it, would have dared to go on.