us secured enormous gains; but he had no desire to accumulate a
fortune without labour and without honour. He himself never speculated
in shares. When he was satisfied as to the merits of any undertaking, he
subscribed for a certain amount of capital in it, and held on, neither
buying nor selling. At a dinner of the Leeds and Bradford directors at
Ben Rydding in October, 1844, before the mania had reached its height, he
warned those present against the prevalent disposition towards railway
speculation. It was, he said, like walking upon a piece of ice with
shallows and deeps; the shallows were frozen over, and they would carry,
but it required great caution to get over the deeps. He was satisfied
that in the course of the next year many would step on to places not
strong enough to carry them, and would get into the deeps; they would be
taking shares, and afterwards be unable to pay the calls upon them.
Yorkshiremen were reckoned clever men, and his advice to them was, to
stick together and promote communication in their own neighbourhood,--not
to go abroad with their speculations. If any had done so, he advised
them to get their money back as fast as they could, for if they did not
they would not get it at all. He informed the company, at the same time,
of his earliest holding of railway shares; it was in the Stockton and
Darlington Railway, and the number he held was _three_--"a very large
capital for him to possess at the time." But a Stockton friend was
anxious to possess a share, and he sold him _one_ at a premium of 33s.;
he supposed he had been about the first man in England to sell a railway
share at a premium.

During 1845, his son's offices in Great George-street, Westminster, were
crowded with persons of various conditions seeking interviews, presenting
very much the appearance of the levee of a minister of state. The burly
figure of Mr. Hudson, the "Railway King," surrounded by an admiring group
of followers, was often to be seen there; and a still more interesting
person, in the estimation of many, was George Stephenson, dressed in
black, his coat of somewhat old-fashioned cut, with square pockets in the
tails. He wore a white neckcloth, and a large bunch of seals was
suspended from his watch-ribbon. Altogether, he presented an appearance
of health, intelligence, and good humour, that rejoiced one to look upon
in that sordid, selfish and eventually ruinous saturnalia of railway
speculation.

Powe