the
route from start to finish. The engine pulled but one coach, and had one
passenger. The gray horse was hitched to a buggy that carried one man
besides the driver.

The engine led for five miles, when the boiler sprang a leak and
stopped, the engineer in his anxiety getting on too much pressure. The
horse won, and this proved to many people a fact which they had
suspected and foretold; namely, that the steam-engine for land-carriages
was only a plaything. Farmers in that vicinity took heart and began
again to turn their attention to raising horses.

* * * * *

In the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one, when Peter Cooper was forty
years old, he was worth fifty thousand dollars; when he was forty-five,
he was worth a hundred thousand dollars; when he was fifty, he was worth
more than two hundred thousand dollars. He was one of the richest men of
New York, and he was a man of influence. Had he centered on
money-making, he might have become the richest man in America.

He held political office that he might serve the people, not that he
might serve a party or himself. In all deliberative bodies, the actual
work is done by a few. A dozen men or less run Congress.

For forty years Peter Cooper served the City of New York and the State,
and always to his own financial loss. He saw the last remains of the
Indian Stockade removed from Manhattan Island. When he was elected
alderman, the city was patrolled by night-watchmen, who made their
rounds and cried the hour and "All's Well!" For five hours, from
midnight until five o'clock in the morning, they walked and watched.
They were paid a dollar a night, and the money was collected from the
people who owned property on the streets they patrolled, just as in
country towns they sprinkle the streets in front of the residences owned
by the men who subscribe.

Peter Cooper inaugurated a system of "public safety," or police
protection. He also replaced the old volunteer fire-department with a
paid service. He was the first man to protest against the use of wells
as a water-supply for a growing city.

The first water-pipes used in New York City were bored logs; he fought
against these, and finally induced the city to use iron pipes. As there
was no iron pipe at this time made in America, he inaugurated a company
to cast pipe. Very naturally his motives in demanding iron pipes were
assailed, but he stood his ground and made the pipes and sold them t