hanging and standing round; for busy as he had need to be eking out his means by engineering clocks and coats, the construction and improvement of machinery for the collieries was his hobby.

Likeness of tastes drew a young farmer often to the cottage, John Wigham, who spent most of his evenings in George's society. John had a smattering of chemistry and philosophy, and a superior knowledge of mathematics, which made him a desirable companion. George put himself under his tuition, and again took to "figuring;" tasks set him in the evening were worked out among the rough toils of the day. And so much honest purpose did not fail to secure progress. Drawing was another new line of effort. Sheets of plans and sections gave his rude desk the air of mindwork somewhere. Thus their winter evenings passed away.

Bobby was growing up in a little thought-world by himself; for he could not fail to be interested in all that interested his father, that father always making his son the companion of his studies, and early introducing him into the curious and cunning power of machinery.

Ah, that was a proud day when little Bob was old enough, and knew enough, to be sent to the academy at Newcastle. He was thirteen. His father's means had happily been increased. The old engine-wright of the colliery having died, George Stephenson was promoted to the post, on the salary of over a hundred pounds a year. This was in 1812.

The new office relieving him from incessant hard work, and the necessity of earning a shilling by extra labours, he had more time for study, and for verifying his plans of practical improvement; and the consequence was very considerable improvement in the machinery of the colliery to which he was attached.

Meanwhile Robert's education went on apace. The boy was hungry for knowledge, not only for himself, but to satisfy the voracious appetite of his father, and the no less keen one of John Wigham.

Robert joined a literary and philosophical society at Newcastle, whose fine library opened a rich storehouse of material. Here the boy spent most of his time out of school, storing his mind with principles, facts, and illustrations, to carry home on Saturday afternoon. Books also. The Edinburgh Encyclopædia was at his command. A volume of that at the cottage unfolded a world of wonders. But the library had some books too choice to be trusted away. How was Robert to get the gist of these home? His father had often said that a "good drawing and a well-executed plan would always explain itself," and many a time he had placed a rough sketch of machinery before his son and told him to describe it. Robert, therefore, when he could do no better, put his drilling to test, and copied diagrams and drew pictures, thus taking many an important and perhaps rare specimen of machinery and science to Killingworth, for his father's benefit.

We can well imagine Saturday afternoon was as much a holiday to father as to son. Robert's coming was hailed with delight. John did not lag far behind. Some of the neighbours dropped in to listen to discussions which made the little room a spot of lively interest and earnest toil. Wide-awake mind allows nothing stagnant around it.

Among the borrowed books of the day was Ferguson's "Astronomy," which put father and son to calculating and constructing a sun-dial for the latitude of Killingworth. It was wrought in stone, and fixed on the cottage door; and there it stands still, with its date, August 11, 1816—a year or two before Robert left school—a fair specimen of the drift of his boyish tastes.

CHAPTER III.

WHO BEGAN RAILROADS—"PUFFING BILLY."

Familiar as it has become to us, who does not stop to look with interest at the puffing, snorting, screaming steam-horse? And who does not rejoice in the iron-rail, which binds together with its slender threads the north and the south, and makes neighbours of the east and the west?

"Who began railroads?" ask the boys again and again.

The first idea of the modern railroad had its birth at a colliery nearly two hundred years ago. In order to lighten the labour of the horses the colliers let straight pieces of wood into the road leading from the pit to the river where the coal was discharged; and the waggons were found to run so much easier, that one horse could draw four or five chaldrons. As wood quickly wore out, and moreover was liable to rot, the next step was nailing plates of iron on the wooden rail, which gave them for a time the name of "plateway" roads. A Mr. Outram making still farther improvements, they were called Outram roads, or, for shortness' sake, "tram-roads"; and tramroads came into general use at the English collieries.

"There's mischief in those tramroads," said a large canal owner, foreseeing they would one day push canal stock quite out of the market.

Improvements thus far had centred on the roads. To convey heavy loads easier and faster was the point aimed at. Nobody had yet thought of self-going teams. Watt, the father of steam-engines, said steam-carriages might be built. He, however, never tried one; but rather left the idea to sprout in the brain of an old pupil of his, William Murdock, who did construct a very small one, running on thin wheels, and heated by a lamp. It was a curious success in its way, and set other minds thinking.

One of these was a tin-miner of Cornwall, Captain Trevethick, a friend of Murdock, who joined a cousin of his in getting a patent for building a steam-carriage. It was built, and an odd piece of machinery it was. It ran on four wheels over a common road, looked like a stage-coach, and delighted both the inventor and his friends. They determined to exhibit it at London. While on its journey, driving it one day at the top of its speed, they saw a toll-gate in the distance; not being able to check it in time, bump it went against the gate, which flew open in a trice, leaving the affrighted tollman, in answer to their inquiries, "How much to pay?" only able to gasp out, "No—noth-ing to pay—drive off as fast as you can! nothing to pay!"

It reached London in safety, and was some time on exhibition. Multitudes flocked to see it, and some called it a "fiery dragon."

"Ah," said Sir Humphrey Davy, very much interested in the invention, "I hope to see the captain's 'dragons' on all the roads of England yet."

But the captain exhibited it only as a curiosity, the unevenness of the roads rendering it for all practical purposes a failure; and the captain had neither pluck nor genius enough to lay or clear a track for it himself. This was in 1803.

The idea, however, was in England, lodging itself here and there in busy brains; until at last a colliery owner in Newcastle, seeing the great advantage of having a locomotive on his tram-roads, determined to try what he could do. Accordingly he had one built after the Cornish captain's model. It burst up at starting. Noways baffled, he tried again.