ght, to earn a little money to attend a night school, giving the
first money he ever earned, $150, to his blind father to pay his debts.
People say he is crazy; his "roaring steam engine will set the house on
fire with its sparks"; "smoke will pollute the air"; "carriage makers
and coachmen will starve for want of work." For three days the
committee of the House of Commons plies questions to him. This was one
of them: "If a cow get on the track of the engine traveling ten miles
an hour, will it not be an awkward situation?" "Yes, very awkward,
indeed, for the coo," replied Stephenson. A government inspector said
that if a locomotive ever went ten miles an hour, he would undertake to
eat a stewed engine for breakfast.

"What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held
out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as horses?" asked a writer
in the English "Quarterly Review" for March, 1825. "We should as soon
expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon
one of Congreve's rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a
machine, going at such a rate. We trust that Parliament will, in all
the railways it may grant, _limit the speed to eight or nine miles an
hour_, which we entirely agree with Mr. Sylvester is as great as can be
ventured upon." This article referred to Stephenson's proposition to
use his newly invented locomotive instead of horses on the Liverpool
and Manchester Railroad, then in process of construction.

The company decided to lay the matter before two leading English
engineers, who reported that steam would be desirable only when used in
stationary engines one and a half miles apart, drawing the cars by
means of ropes and pulleys. But Stephenson persuaded them to test his
idea by offering a prize of about twenty-five hundred dollars for the
best locomotive produced at a trial to take place October 6, 1829.

On the eventful day, thousands of spectators assembled to watch the
competition of four engines, the "Novelty," the "Rocket," the
"Perseverance," and the "Sanspareil." The "Perseverance" could make
but six miles an hour, and so was ruled out, as the conditions called
for at least ten. The "Sanspareil" made an average of fourteen miles
an hour, but as it burst a water-pipe it lost its chance. The
"Novelty" did splendidly, but also burst a pipe, and was crowded out,
leaving the "Rocket" to carry off the honors with an average speed of
fifteen