into sight and disappeared with success well within reach."

"And who was the next promoter?"

"Peter Cooper was the next experimenter of note," Mr. Tolman answered,
"and his adventure with railroading was entertaining, too. He lived in
Baltimore and being of a commercial trend of mind he decided that if a
railroad could be built through the Potomac Valley and across the
Alleghany Mountains it might win back for his state the trade that was
rapidly being snatched away by the Erie and Pennsylvania Canal. With
this idea in mind Cooper built thirteen miles of track and after
experimenting with a sort of tram-car and finding it a failure he had a
car made that should be propelled by sails."

"Sails!" gasped Steve.

His father smiled at his astonishment.

"Yes, sails!" he repeated. "Into this strangely equipped vehicle he
invited some of the editors of the Baltimore papers, and little sensing
what was before them the party set forth on its excursion."

"Did the car go?"

"Oh, it went all right!" chuckled Mr. Tolman. "The trouble was not with
its _going_. The difficulty was that as it flew along the rails a cow
suddenly loomed in its pathway and as she did not move out of the way of
the approaching car she and the railroad pioneers came into collision.
With a crash the car toppled over and the editors, together with the
enraged Peter Cooper, were thrown out into the mud. Of course the affair
caused the public no end of laughter but to Cooper and his guests it
proved convincingly that sails were not a desirable substitute for steam
power."

"I suppose Cooper then went to work to build some other kind of a
railroad," mused Steve.

"That is exactly what he did," was the rejoinder. "He did not, however,
do this deliberately but rather fell into a dilemma that left him no
other choice. You see a group of men coaxed him to buy some land
through which it was expected the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was to
pass. These prospectors figured that as the road was already started and
a portion of the wooden track laid the railroad was a sure thing, and by
selling their land to the railroad authorities they would be enabled to
turn quite a fortune for themselves. In all good faith Cooper had joined
the company and then, after discovering that the railroad men had
apparently abandoned their plan to build, in dastardly fashion, one
after another of the promoters wriggled out of the enterprise and left
poor Peter Cooper with a