GEORGE STEPHENSON. n» 



■:arriage could stand on it 'short of the bottom.' In this bog, 

 singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished historian of the 

 Medtcis, buried liis fortune in the hopeless attempt to cultivate 

 it. Nevertheless, farming operations had for some time been 

 going on, and were extending along the verge of the moss; 

 but the tilled ground, underneath which the bog extended, was 

 so soft that the horses when })loughing were provided with flat- 

 soled shoes to prevent their hoofs sinking deep into the soil. 



" For weeks the stuff was poured in, and little or no progress 

 seemed to have been made. The directors of the railway 

 became alarmed, and they feared that the evil prognostications 

 of the eminent civil engineers were now about to be realised, 



" Mr. Stephenson was asked for his opinion ; and his invari- 

 able answer was, 'We must persevere." And so he went on ; 

 but still the insatiable bog gaped for more material, which was 

 emptied in truck-load after truck-load without any apparent 

 effect. Then a special meeting of the board was summoned, 

 and it was held upon the spot, to detemiine whether the work 

 should be proceeded with or abandoned. Mr. Stephenson him- 

 self afterwards described the transaction at a i)ublic dinner 

 given at Birmingham on the 23rd of December, 1837, on the 

 occasion of a piece of plate being presented to his son, the 

 engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway. He related 

 the anecdote, he said, for the purpose of impressing upon the 

 minds of all who heard him the necessity of perseverance. 



" ' After working for weeks and weeks,' said he, ' in filling in 

 materials to form the road, there did not yet appear to be the 

 least sign of our being able to raise the solid embankment one 

 single inch ; in short, we went on filling in without the slightest 

 apparent effect. Even my assistants began to feel uneasy, and 

 to doubt of the success of the scheme. The directors, too, spoke 



