Upon investigation he learned that they had been built years before to accommodate this same tide of wagon traffic, which now congested at the bridges, and which even then had been rapidly rising.

Being forced to pay a toll in time to which a slight toll in cash, exacted for the privilege of using a tunnel, had seemed to the investors and public infinitely to be preferred, this traffic had been offered this opportunity of avoiding the delay.
However, like many another handsome commercial scheme on paper or bubbling in the human brain, the plan did not work exactly.

These tunnels might have proved profitable if they had been properly built with long, low-per-cent.

grades, wide roadways, and a sufficiency of light and air; but, as a matter of fact, they had not been judiciously adapted to public convenience.

Norman Schryhart's father had been an investor in these tunnels, and Anson Merrill.