40 HIS IMPROVEMENT OF LEISURE. CHAP. IV. 



engine-fireman, and contrived with difficulty " to keep 

 his head above water." When the visit had been paid, 

 the bridal party prepared to set out for their new home 

 at Wellington Quay. They went in a style which was 

 quite common before travelling by railway had been 

 invented. Two farm horses were borrowed from Mr. 

 Burn, of the Red House Farm, Wolsingham, where 

 Anne Henderson, the bride's sister, lived as servant. 

 The two horses were each provided with a saddle and 

 a pillion, and George having mounted one, his wife 

 seated herself behind him, holding on by her arms round 

 his waist. Robert Gray and Anne Henderson in like 

 mariner mounted the other horse ; and in this wise the 

 wedding party rode across the country, passing through 

 the old streets of Newcastle, and then by Wallsend to 

 Willington Quay a long ride of about fifteen miles. 



George Stephenson's daily life at Willington was 

 that of a steady workman. By the manner, however, 

 in which he continued to improve his spare hours in 

 the evening, he was silently and surely paving the 

 way for being something more than a manual labourer. 

 He diligently set himself to study the principles of 

 mechanics, and to master the laws by which his engine 

 worked. For a workman, he was even at that time 

 more than ordinarily speculative often taking up 

 strange theories, and trying to sift out the truth that 

 was in them. While sitting by the side of his young- 

 wife in his cottage-dwelling in the winter evenings, he 

 was usually occupied in studying mechanical subjects, 

 or in modelling experimental machines. Amongst his 

 various speculations while at Willington, he tried to 

 discover a means of Perpetual Motion. Although he 

 failed, as so many others had done before him, the very 

 efforts he made tended to whet his inventive faculties, and 

 to call forth his dormant powers. He actually went so far 

 as to construct the model of a machine for the purpose. 

 It consisted of a wooden wheel, the periphery of which 



