“I never had a comfortable night’s sleep during all the time the work was going on. I lived in perpetual fear of some horrible accident. We could not keep people out of the rotunda. Suppose there had been a weak place in one of the timbers, a flaw in an iron pin, a rotten strand in one of the ropes--and against neither of these things could we entirely guard--there is no knowing how many lives might have been lost.” “What precautions did you take?” “We made everything four times as strong as it was necessary to lift two tons of iron to a given height.” “Were any lives lost?” “I only had three men killed in all the time. We had stopped work for dinner one day, and when the workmen returned they found one of their number dead on the ground. No one saw him fall, but it was plain he had missed his foothold on the scaffold and been precipitated to the ground. His head had come in contact with some projecting beam. That was the end of him. Another lost his life in the same way; but the third, poor fellow! it makes my hair stand on end to think of it--a rope gave way and caught him.” “The lightning hug of an anaconda?” “Yes, yes; that is it. Poor Charlie! he never knew what hurt him. It chopped him up in an instant. You don’t know how quick a big rope can do that thing.” The dome might have been completed in five years, but the Secretary of the Interior during the dark days of the rebellion stopped the work, at a great pecuniary loss to the contractors. On the average 200 men were employed in building the dome, including those who were working on the castings in the foundry. The largest pieces of iron weighed two tons each. The chief engineers employed were Gen. M. C. Meigs and Gen. Wm. B. Franklin. These engineers were detailed from the War Department because the building was Government property. Everything pertaining to this work is under the care of the engineer, and for its faithful execution he is responsible. It is the engineer who accepts the plan of the architect and judges of strength and merit. It is the engineer who makes the contracts and disburses the money. The word of the engineer is law. He is the autocrat in his own dominion, from whose fiat there is no appeal. As we have already said, the dome is composed wholly of iron and glass, whilst the image which crowns it is made of bronze, designed by Crawford, and executed by Clark Mills. The weight of this goddess is about 1,700 pounds. Everything included, the dome weighs 10,000,000 pounds, which if turned into gold by the enchanter’s wand would about pay the national debt.