“_Dear Sir_: I did not until yesterday receive yours of February 25th; where it has been loitering on the road I am at a loss to say. I had before read of your very ingenious proposition as to the railway communications. I fear, however, on mature reflection, that they will be liable to serious objection, and ultimately more expensive than a canal. They must be double, so as to prevent the danger of two such bodies meeting. The walls on which they are to be placed should at least be four feet below the surface and three feet above, and must be clamped with iron, and even then would hardly sustain so heavy a weight as you propose moving at the rate of four miles an hour on wheels. As to wood, it would not last a week. They must be covered with iron, and that, too, very thick and strong. The means of stopping these heavy carriages without great shock, and of preventing them from running on each other--for there would be many running on the road at once--would be very difficult. In cases of accidental stops to take wood and water, etc., many accidents would happen. The carriage of condensing water would be very troublesome. Upon the whole, I fear the expense would be much greater than that of canals, without being so convenient. “R. R. LIVINGSTON.” Ordinary business men, and even accomplished engineers, manifested as little knowledge in regard to the principles of science in railroading as they did in regard to the telegraph. Both were new fields for experiment, and both operators made many ridiculous mistakes. When William D. Wesson announced he would demonstrate the practicability of sending and receiving messages over his wires stretched on poles from Chillicothe to Columbus, and _vice versa_, many persons had business into the city on that day, but ostensibly to witness the wonderful performance. Early in the morning advertised for free messages, an honest patron of science living on the line a short distance out of town went up one of the poles and hung a letter on the wire, and secreted himself in view of the missive and in vain watched it all day, that he might obtain the secret of the process.