I oo HER OES OF IN UJLNTION AND DISCO VER V. 



line on the day fixed, the 27th of December, 1825 — eventful 

 day in railway history, well worthy the great " Jubilee " held at 

 Darlington in 1875. 



Of the first interview between Stevenson and Pease, ver}' 

 graphic accounts have been given by Dr. Smiles who had an 

 interview with Mr. Pease in 1854, four years before his death, 

 and when he had reached the patriarchial age of eighty-eight. 

 Hale and hearty, and full of reminiscences of the past, sound in 

 liealth, with his eye not dimmed or his natural force abated, 

 Mr. Pease narrated many circumstances which the biographer 

 of the engineer has made full use of. He described the 

 appearance of Stephenson as having " an honest, sensible look 

 about him, and so modest and unpretending withal." Stephen- 

 son spoke in the strong Northumbrian dialect of his district, 

 and described himself as "only the engine-\vright of Killingworth 

 — that's what I am." In the course of the interview, Edward 

 Pease said to Dr. Smiles, with much truth — referring to the 

 growth of the trees in front of his house which he had planted 

 as a boy — "Ay, but railways are a far more extraordinary 

 growth even than these. They have grown up not only since 

 I was a boy, but since I was a man. When I started the 

 Stockton and Darlinglon, some fivc-and-thirty years since, I 

 was already fifty years old. Nobody would then have dreamt 

 what railways would have grown to in one man's lifetime." 



The 27th day of September, 1825, deserves to be marked as a 

 red-letter day in the calendar of the world's history. On that 

 morning the greatest revolution of modern times was to be 

 inaugurated — the painfully slow development of men's ideas up 

 to that point being followed, though not quite immediately, by 

 results which were none the less consequent upon that day's 

 proceedings, that the persons chiefly engaged in the work failed 



