The Mohawk and Hudson Bail Road. 



281 



business sprang up again in staging. The old coaches 

 that had been laid aside were hauled out and brushed up, and 

 State street saw the revival of a business that was supposed 

 to have passed away forever. On the 22d of September a 

 hundred passengers had been sent over the turnpike be- 

 fore ten o'clock in the forenoon. The fare was fifty cents, 

 and such was the energy of the opposition, and the eager- 

 ness to save twenty-five cents so great, that in seven days 

 1.697 passengers were carried over by the stages, twenty 

 stage loads going over in one da}^ without taking all pas- 

 sengers that offered. Nothing like this had been known 

 to the turnpike in the palmiest days of that ancient 

 thoroughfare. Steam finally triumphed however, and the 

 strife ceased. 



In November, 1841, a special meeting of the common 

 council was called to deliberate upon a proposition of the 

 directors of the rail road, offering to the city their State 

 street property and $150,000 of the bonds of the company, 

 if the city would undertake the expense of doing away 

 with the inclined planes, at both ends of the road, and 

 bring the eastern terminus as near the centre of the city 

 as possible, locomotives to be used. The change was made, 

 the shares which had declined to less than fifty cents on 

 the dollar, again rose in the market and attained a respect- 

 able position among the stocks. 



This may be as far as a didactic discourse on a pilgrim- 

 age to Schenectady in 1831, can with consistency be 

 carried. A retrospect of the rude but novel appliances 

 which we viewed with so much wonder and admiration 

 less than half a century ago, will awaken for the moment 

 by its contrast a more vivid realization of the progress of 

 the age in which we have been placed. The simple and 

 feeble locomotive with an imperfect feed pipe — the fra- 

 gile tender, provided with two baskets of faggots and an 

 armful of wood — the cramped coach bodies used as cars, 

 having three inside seats capable of seating three persons 

 Trans, viii.'] 36 



