oy
his hospitality, which never failed. With them he would "fight his
battles o'er again," reverting to his battle for the locomotive; and he
was never tired of telling, nor were his auditors of listening to, the
lively anecdotes with which he was accustomed to illustrate the struggles
of his early career. Whilst walking in the woods or through the grounds,
he would arrest his friend's attention by allusion to some simple
object,--such as a leaf, a blade of grass, a bit of bark, a nest of
birds, or an ant carrying its eggs across the path,--and descant in
glowing terms upon the creative power of the Divine Mechanician, whose
contrivances were so exhaustless and so wonderful. This was a theme upon
which he was often accustomed to dwell in reverential admiration, when in
the society of his more intimate friends.

One night, when walking under the stars, and gazing up into the field of
suns, each the probable centre of a system, forming the Milky Way, a
friend said to him, "What an insignificant creature is man in sight of so
immense a creation as that!" "Yes!" was his reply; "but how wonderful a
creature also is man, to be able to think and reason, and even in some
measure to comprehend works so infinite!"

A microscope, which he had brought down to Tapton, was a source of
immense enjoyment to him; and he was never tired of contemplating the
minute wonders which it revealed. One evening, when some friends were
visiting him, he induced them each to puncture their skin so as to draw
blood, in order that he might examine the globules through the
microscope. One of the gentlemen present was a teetotaller, and Mr.
Stephenson pronounced his blood to be the most lively of the whole. He
had a theory of his own about the movement of the globules in the blood,
which has since become familiar. It was, that they were respectively
charged with electricity, positive at one end and negative at the other,
and that thus they attracted and repelled each other, causing a
circulation. No sooner did he observe anything new, than he immediately
set about devising a reason for it. His training in mechanics, his
practical familiarity with matter in all its forms, and the strong bent
of his mind, led him first of all to seek for a mechanical explanation.
And yet he was ready to admit that there was a something in the principle
of _life_--so mysterious and inexplicable--which baffled mechanics, and
seemed to dominate over and control th