474 HIS OBSEKVANT FACULTIES. CHAP. XXI. 



examining him, and said " Oil T- , I'm ashamed of 

 you! You know my line's the best, and that I'm in 

 the right and you're in the wrong, and yet you've been 

 worrying me as if you did'nt know that I was right." 



Mr. Stephenson's close and accurate observation pro- 

 vided him with a fulness of information on many 

 subjects, which often appeared surprising to those who 

 had devoted to them a special study. On one occasion 

 the accuracy of his knowledge of birds came out in a 

 curious way at a convivial meeting of railway men in 

 London. The engineers and railway directors present 

 knew each other as railway men and nothing more. 

 The talk had been all of railways and railway politics. 

 Mr. Stephenson was a great talker on those subjects, 

 and was generally allowed, from the interest of his 

 conversation and the extent of his experience, to take 

 the lead. At length one of the party broke in with 

 " Come now, Stephenson, we have had nothing but rail- 

 ways ; cannot we have a change, and try if we can talk 

 a little about something else ? " " Well," said Mr. 

 Stephenson, " I'll give you a wide range of subjects ; 

 what shall it be about ? " " Say birds nests I " rejoined 

 the other, who prided himself on his special knowledge 

 of this subject. " Then birds' nests be it." A long 

 and animated conversation ensued : the bird-nesting; of 



o 



his boyhood, the blackbird's nest which his father had 

 held him up in his arms to look at when a child at 

 Wylam, the hedges in which he had found the thrush's 

 and the linnet's nests, the mossy bank where the robin 

 built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where 

 the chaffinch had reared its dwelling all rose up clear 

 in his mind's eye, and led him back to the scenes of his 

 boyhood at Callerton and Dewley Burn. The colour 

 and number of the bird's eggs, the period of their 

 incubation, the materials employed by them for the 

 walls and lining of their nests were described by him 

 so vividly, and illustrated by such graphic anecdotes, 



