, who lived with him when at Liverpool, informs us
that when sitting over the fire, he would frequently broach his favourite
theory of the sun's light and heat being the original source of the light
and heat given forth by the burning coal. "It fed the plants of which
that coal is made," he would say, "and has been bottled up in the earth
ever since, to be given out again now for the use of man." His son
Robert once said of him, "My father flashed his bull's eye full upon a
subject, and brought it out in its most vivid light in an instant: his
strong common sense, and his varied experience operating upon a
thoughtful mind, were his most powerful illuminators."

Mr. Stephenson had once a conversation with a watchmaker, whom he
astonished by the extent and minuteness of his knowledge as to the parts
of a watch. The watchmaker knew him to be an eminent engineer, and asked
him how he had acquired so extensive a knowledge of a branch of business
so much out of his sphere. "It is very easy to be explained," said Mr.
Stephenson; "I worked long at watch-cleaning myself, and when I was at a
loss, I was never ashamed to ask for information."

Towards the close of his life he frequently went down to Newcastle, and
visited the scenes of his boyhood. "I have been to Callerton," said he
one day to a friend, "and seen the fields in which I used to pull turnips
at twopence a day; and many a cold finger, I can tell you, I had."

His hand was open to his former fellow-workmen whom old age had left in
poverty. To poor Robert Gray, of Newburn, who acted as his bridesman on
his marriage to Fanny Henderson, he left a pension for life. He would
slip a five-pound note into the hand of a poor man or a widow in such a
way as not to offend their delicacy, but to make them feel as if the
obligation were all on his side. When Farmer Paterson, who married a
sister of George's first wife, Fanny Henderson, died and left a large
young family fatherless, poverty stared them in the face. "But ye ken,"
said our informant, "_George struck in fayther for them_." And perhaps
the providential character of the act could not have been more
graphically expressed than in these simple words.

On his visit to Newcastle, he would frequently meet the friends of his
early days, occupying very nearly the same station, whilst he had
meanwhile risen to almost world-wide fame. But he was no less hearty in
his greeting of them than if their relative position h