In that long ago story of the Brooklyn Bridge, there is written the lesson that clear thinking and courage and perseverance can accomplish the seemingly impossible. What traveler over those high-hung roadways ever stops to ask himself how those great round cables, stretched in long, inverted arches above the surge of the river traffic, were ever put in place? They are today simply a part of the stage setting of a busy life, like the river itself. [Sidenote: HOW THE GREAT CABLES WERE MADE] Each of these cables consists of nineteen strands of about two hundred and seventy-eight No. 8 B. W. G. wires each, and each wire is continuous in its strand, like the yarns in a skein, traveling eternally to Brooklyn and back, up over the top of one tower, down in a long curve above the tideway, up to the other tower and down again, to be gripped and carried by links, like a chain, down to the everlasting clutch of the rock and concrete-bound anchorage. Each skein is a million feet long--nearly two hundred miles--and still men talk of "Oriental patience." There is no twist in these ponderous cables, as there is in a wire rope. Every reach of wire lies flat and separate, and when all were in place they were laboriously bound together, first the strands, then when all the strands were up, the whole fabric, into cylindrical form. There are other strange things about these cables; one is that they make practically no strain on the towers save to sustain their weight. Another is that the long storm cables that radiate downward from the top of the towers to the bridge floor, for a space of four hundred feet inside and outside each tower, are themselves calculated to sustain, if need be, the imposed weight for that distance. So that the margin of safety in this seeming web-like structure is far in excess of what timid imaginations have pictured. That was a cardinal feature in all John A. Roebling's plans. He left a safety margin many times greater than the load. It has been an open secret for years that the Brooklyn Bridge has been unwisely taxed, but he knew it would be. [Sidenote: STRINGING THE CABLES ACROSS THE EAST RIVER] Before the cables were in place, New York and Brooklyn stared up at the river-wide space between the bare towers and wondered by what wizardry a bridge could ever be swung across it. The beginning was simple--as simple and prosaic in a way as the hitching of a horse--in principle. It began with wire rope. A scow with a coil of three-quarter inch rope was moored alongside the Brooklyn tower, and the end of the coil was hoisted up the face of the masonwork, passed down on the land side and then carried back. [Illustration: HELPING TO RELIEVE THE FREIGHT CAR SHORTAGE BY QUICK LOADING]