ivances often excited great wonder
amongst the Killingworth villagers. He won the women's admiration by
connecting their cradles with the smoke-jack, and making them
self-acting. Then he astonished the pitmen by attaching an alarum to the
clock of the watchman whose duty it was to call them betimes in the
morning. He also contrived a wonderful lamp which burned under water,
with which he was afterwards wont to amuse the Brandling family at
Gosforth,--going into the fish-pond at night, lamp in hand, attracting
and catching the fish, which rushed wildly towards the flame.

Dr. Bruce tells of a competition which Stephenson had with the joiner at
Killingworth, as to which of them could make the best shoe-last; and when
the former had done his work, either for the humour of the thing, or to
secure fair play from the appointed judge, he took it to the Morrisons in
Newcastle, and got them to put their stamp upon it. So that it is
possible the Killingworth brakesman, afterwards the inventor of the
safety lamp and the originator of the railway system, and John Morrison,
the last-maker, afterwards the translator of the Scriptures into the
Chinese language, may have confronted each other in solemn contemplation
over the successful last, which won the verdict coveted by its maker.

Sometimes he would endeavour to impart to his fellow-workmen the results
of his scientific reading. Everything that he learnt from books was so
new and so wonderful to him, that he regarded the facts he drew from them
in the light of discoveries, as if they had been made but yesterday.
Once he tried to explain to some of the pitmen how the earth was round,
and kept turning round. But his auditors flatly declared the thing to be
impossible, as it was clear that "at the bottom side they must fall off!"
"Ah!" said George, "you don't quite understand it yet." His son Robert
also early endeavoured to communicate to others the information which he
had gathered at school; and Dr. Bruce has related that, when visiting
Killingworth on one occasion, he found him engaged in teaching algebra to
such of the pitmen's boys as would become his pupils.

[Picture: The Sundial]

While Robert was still at school, his father proposed to him during the
holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be placed over their
cottage-door at West Moor. "I expostulated with him at first," said
Robert, "that I had not learnt sufficient astronomy a