to-day have done it justice and sat it and the toast list out, I
wonder. It took place over forty years ago, when the endurance of the
race was, perhaps, greater than now; or why do we now shorten our
banquets and shirk the bottle?

The Stockton and Darlington Railway is 54 miles long, and its authorised
capital was 102,000 pounds--a modest sum indeed, under 2,000 pounds per
mile, less than half the outlay for land alone of the North Midland line
and not one twenty-fifth of the average cost of British railways as they
stand to-day, which is some 57,000 pounds per mile. The railway owed its
origin to George Stephenson and to Edward Pease, the wealthy Quaker and
manufacturer of Darlington, both burly men, strong in mind as body. The
first rail was laid, with much ceremony, near the town of Stockton, on
the 23rd of May, 1822, amid great opposition culminating in acts of
personal violence, for the early railways, from interests that feared
their rivalry, and often from sheer blind ignorance itself, had bitter
antagonism to contend with.

The day brought an immense concourse of people to Darlington, all bent on
seeing the novel spectacle of a train of carriages and wagons filled with
passengers and goods, drawn along a _railway_ by a _steam_ engine. At
eight o'clock in the morning the train started with its load--22
vehicles--hauled by Stephenson's "Locomotion," driven by Stephenson
himself. "Such was its velocity that in some parts of the journey the
speed was frequently 12 miles an hour." The number of passengers reached
450, and the goods and merchandise amounted to 90 tons--a great
accomplishment, and George Stephenson and Edward Pease were proud men
that day.

Seven years from this present time will witness the _Centenary_ of the
railway system. How shall we celebrate _it_? Will railway proprietor,
railway director and railway manager on that occasion be animated with
the gladness, the pride and the hope that brightened the Jubilee Banquet?
Who can tell? The future of railways is all uncertain.

A word or two regarding the railway system of Scotland may not be
inappropriate.

Scotland has eight _working_ railway companies, England and Wales 104,
and Ireland 28. These include light railways, but are exclusive of all
railways, light or ordinary, that are worked not by themselves but by
other companies. Scotland has exhibited her usual good sense, her canny,
thrifty way, by keeping the number of _operating