"Jacobs can do it," his employers were accustomed to say when surprise was expressed at his being placed in command of big operations. "He knows what is to be done, and he knows how to handle his men." When he was twenty-one he went to India as the firm's representative in some big engineering work, and he did so well that he was sent to China, Australia, and the European continent. He helped build several tunnels in London, and in 1889 Austin Corbin, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, brought him to this country to superintend several important changes that were to be made in the road. Jacobs liked this country so well and was so favorably impressed by the outlook for big engineering work that he has remained here, and has become a citizen. His First American Success. He made his first notable success in the construction of the East River gas tunnel. It was a difficult piece of work, for instead of the river-bed of solid rock that was supposed to exist, it was found that the bed was full of fissures through which flowed the mud and water of the river. The contractors wished to give the bore up and try one fifty feet deeper. Jacobs refused to do it, and the board of directors of the company, after listening to his arguments, sided with him. "Can it be done at the present depth?" he was asked. "Give me the men and plant, and I'll put it through myself," he answered. The contractors sued the company and produced a score of experts to prove that the tunnel could not possibly be built in the way Jacobs wanted it built. While the courts were considering the question Jacobs kept right on digging. He had to encounter difficulties that would have turned most engineers back. But in the end he pushed the bore through, and the courts, with this evidence before them, decided against the contractors. He built the tunnel big enough for trolley-cars in case it might be wanted for that purpose, and he constructed it so solidly that none of the silt or water of the East River has been able to filter in. Another Difficult Task. In 1877 an attempt was made to tunnel the Hudson River, but the work moved along fitfully. In July, 1880, an accident that resulted in the death of twenty men temporarily put an end to it. Two more attempts were made, and again the work was abandoned. A fourth company revived the scheme, and made Jacobs the engineer. The work was just in his line, for it gave him the opportunity to overcome big obstacles and to carry through a project that would be of big benefit to humanity.