t of grasshopper engine with very long piston rods and with legs at
the back to help push it along; with this odd contrivance he ventured
out into the road one night just at twilight. Unfortunately, however,
his restless toy started off before he was ready to have it, and
turning down an unfrequented lane encountered a timid clergyman who was
taking a peaceful stroll and frightened the old gentleman almost out of
his wits. The poor man had never seen a locomotive before and when the
steaming object with its glowing furnace and its host of moving arms and
legs came puffing toward him through the dusk he was overwhelmed with
terror and screamed loudly for help."

A laugh arose from the listeners.

"And that is but one of the many droll experiences of the first
locomotive makers," continued Mr. Tolman. "For example Trevithick,
another pioneer in the field, also built a small steam locomotive which
he took out on the road for a trial trip. It chanced that during the
experimental journey he and his fireman came to a tollgate and puffing
up to the keeper with the baby steam engine, they asked what the fee
would be for it to pass. Now the gate keeper, like the minister, had had
no acquaintance with locomotives, and on seeing the panting red object
looming like a specter out of the darkness and hearing a man's voice
intermingled with its gasps and snorts, he shouted with chattering
teeth:

"There is nothing to pay, my dear Mr. Devil! Just d-r-i-v-e along as
f-a-s-t--as--ever--you--can."

His hearers applauded the story.

"Who did finally invent the railroad?" inquired Doris after the
merriment had subsided.

"George Stephenson, an Englishman," replied her father. "For some time
he had been experimenting with steam locomotives at the Newcastle coal
mines where some agency stronger than mules or horses was needed to
carry the products from one place to another. He had no idea of
transporting people when he began to work out the suggestion. All he
thought of was a coal train which would run on short lengths of track
from mine to mine. But the notion assumed unexpected proportions until
the Darlington road, the most ambitious of his projects, reached the
astonishing distance of thirty-seven miles. When the rails for it were
laid the engineer intended it should be used merely for coal
transportation, as its predecessors had been; but some of the miners who
lived along the route and were daily obliged to go back and forth to