see, and had its ships as well as the canal
boats that connected the city with the manufacturing districts of the
Merrimac. Therefore, although the question of building railroads was
agitated in 1819 nothing was done about the matter. As was natural the
canal company opposed the venture, and there was little enthusiasm
elsewhere concerning a project that demanded a great outlay of money
with only scant guarantee that any of it would ever come back to the
capitalists who advanced it. Moreover, the public in general was
sceptical about railroads or else totally uninterested in them. And even
had a railroad been built at this time it would not have been a steam
road for it was proposed to propel the cars by horse power just as those
at Quincy had been."

"Oh!" interjected Steve scornfully. "They might at least have tried
steam."

"People had little faith in it," explained Mr. Tolman. "Those who had
the faith lacked the money to back the enterprise, and those who had the
money lacked the faith. If a company could have gone ahead and built a
steam railroad that was an unquestioned success many persons would
undoubtedly have been convinced of its value and been willing to put
capital into it; but as matters stood, there was so much antagonism
against the undertaking that nobody cared to launch the venture. There
were many business men who honestly regarded a steam railroad as a
menace to property and so strong was this feeling that in 1824 the town
of Dorchester, a village situated a short distance from Boston, actually
took legal measures to prevent any railroad from passing through its
territory."

"They needn't have been so fussed," said Stephen, with a grin.
"Railroads weren't plenty enough to worry them!"

"Oh, the Quincy road was not the only railroad in Massachusetts," his
father asserted quickly, "for in spite of opposition a railroad to
Lowell, modeled to some extent after the old granite road, had been
built. This railroad was constructed on stone ties, as the one at Quincy
had been; for although such construction was much more costly it was
thought at the time to be far more durable. Several years afterward,
when experience had demonstrated that wood possessed more _give_, and
that a hard, unyielding roadbed only creates jar, the granite ties that
had cost so much were taken up and replaced by wooden ones."

"What a shame!"

"Thus do we live and learn," said his father whimsically. "Our blunders
are often