GEORGE STEPHENSON. 69 



GEORGE STEPHENSON* 



RAILWAY train, a steamer, or our complicated system 

 of telegraphy, are all often triumphantly pointed to as 

 the high-water mark of modern civilisation. While there is 

 nothing wrong in this, it is at the same time self-evident that 

 it is well to bear the thought in mind, that our boasted progress 

 has been a slow growth, that a thousand lives and influences 

 have been used to help it forward, and that the men of the 

 present age are laying down or recreating the foundations 

 of the life and wellbeing of the generations to come. When 

 we think of railways and the locomotive, the names of James 

 Watt and George Stephenson rise to mind. We intend briefly 

 and simply to trace the principal incidents in the career of the 

 latter. To all true workers it is full of stimulus and encourage- 

 ment, for work done \visely, worthily, and well, anywhere, 

 unites the worker to that great fellowship, known or unknown 

 to the world, who labour as in the sight and hope of heaven, 

 and do well the little common duties of every day. 



George Stephenson was born on the 9th of June, 1781, at 

 the village of Wylam, about eight miles west of Newcastle-on- 

 Tyne. His parents were poor but respectable, and his father, 

 Robert Stephenson, was fireman of the pumping-engine at 

 Wylam. and Ke ie tlescxiberl hy Dr. Smiles as of an amiable 



