PREFACE. xi 



of him. They begrudged him neither his prosperity 

 nor his fame. They spoke of " George " as if he had 

 been of their own kin, a member of their own family ; 

 and were as proud of his career as if it had been their 

 own. There was much that was very graphic in their 

 relation of the incidents in " George's " early life, the 

 vividness of which, the author fears, may have escaped 

 in the process of reporting. But so far as any merit 

 belongs to the earlier part of the narrative, he readily 

 acknowledges that it is in a great measure due to the 

 working men from whose lips he gathered it colliers, 

 brakesmen, and enginemen, mostly old men, some of 

 them disabled by accidents and hard work whom he 

 visited in succession at Wylam, Callerton, Newburn, 

 Willington, and Killingworth. 



While residing at Newcastle, the author was also 

 enabled readily to visit Darlington, and to gather from 

 the lips of the venerable Edward Pease, to whom he 

 had been introduced by a letter from Robert Stephenson, 

 the interesting history of the Stockton and Darlington 

 Railway, of which Mr. Pease was the projector, the 

 account of his employment of George Stephenson as 

 the engineer of that line, and of his subsequent con- 

 nection with him as partner in the locomotive foundry 

 in Forth Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. At Darlington 

 also he obtained from John Dixon, C.E., many interest- 

 ing facts relative to the survey of the Stockton and 

 Darlington Railway, and the construction of the Liver- 

 pool and Manchester Railway across Chat Moss, of 

 which portion of the line Mr. Dixon had been the 

 resident engineer. 



Having thus gathered together the materials of what, 



b 2 



