This apparent neglect is not due to a lack of appreciation of their work by the people, but rather to the fact that their labors are performed in obscurity, and hence are unknown. Far in the wilderness, or deep in the tunnel, or in the mire of the caisson, they toil all unseen by their generation, sacrificing health and often life while searching for the true pathway or laying its foundations. When the bridges are builded, the tunnels completed, and the broad highway is thrown open for travel and traffic, few or none of the passing throng give a moment’s thought to the labors and sacrifices of the builders, or the tribute of a sigh to the memory of those who perished at their work. Impressed with a sense of public obligation and of a duty to the memory of a citizen with whose labors and sacrifices in the interests of this city I had great opportunities to become familiar, it has been a grateful task to place on record some of the incidents in the life of Hon. Dorman B. Eaton as they came under my personal observation. He was by nature, education, and association a reformer of the civil administration. Born and bred in the rural communities of Vermont, educated at Harvard, a partner of the famous Judge Kent, of this city, and an associate of men of the type of William Curtis Noyes, Charles O’Conor, and others of equal reputation, Mr. Eaton was admirably equipped for the great work to which he devoted so much of his life and energies. [Sidenote: A Constructive Reformer] Nor was he a reformer whose methods were simply destructive of what he regarded as wrong or evil in the municipal government; on the contrary, his mind was eminently constructive, and consequently he sought to remedy defects by substituting the new and best for the old and worst with as little friction and disturbance as possible. Thus he quietly and without observation, as a master builder, laid foundations and reared the massive superstructures of four of the best-organized and most efficient departments of our city government--viz., the Department of Health, the Fire Department, the Department of Docks, the Police Judiciary. [Sidenote: Character of Previous Agitation] My personal acquaintance with Mr. Eaton began in the year 1864, when we became associated in an effort to secure reforms in the sanitary government of the City of New York. Although prior to this date there had been periods of agitation in favor of a more efficient health organization, especially when epidemics, like cholera, visited the city and the utter worthlessness of our health officials became apparent, yet there had been no such organized effort as that of 1864. Previous agitation had, however, been very useful in preparing the way for the final struggle, by creating a popular interest in these reforms and in rendering the public mind both sympathetic and receptive. [Sidenote: Incompetent Health Officers]