Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Rocket: The Story of the Stephensons Father and Son by Knight Helen C Helen Cross
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 313 lines and 26605 words, and 7 pages
THE ROCKET.
THE STORY OF THE STEPHENSONS,
Father and Son.
London: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
Preface.
Contents.
EARLY WORK, 10
A SAFETY LAMP, 11
BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON, 12
AT SCHOOL, 17
MENDING THE CLOCK, 21
THE SUN-DIAL, 29
GEORGE STEPHENSON'S FIRST ENGINE, 35
"PUFFING BILLY," 36
THE VISIT TO "PUFFING BILLY," 44
THE TWO STRANGERS, 50
A TALK ABOUT RAILWAYS, 54
SURVEYING AT NIGHT, 63
CHAT MOSS, 74
GOOD SERVICE, 81
A CURIOUS ENCOUNTER, 87
SECTION OF THE FIRST BOILER IN USE, 92
SECTION OF A TUBULAR BOILER, 93
THE FAILURE, 95
TUBES OF A MODERN ENGINE, 96
THE "ROCKET," 97
OPENING THE LINE, 104
WHOLESOME REPROOF, 115
LATER DAYS OF GEORGE STEPHENSON, 116
VICTORIA BRIDGE, MONTREAL, 118
THE ROCKET.
LIFE AMONG THE COAL PITS.
What useful little fellow is this, carrying his father's dinner to him at the coal-pit? He takes care, also, of his little brothers and sisters, keeping them clear of the coal-waggons, which run to and fro before the cottage door. Then he is seen tending a neighbour's cows. Now, he is moulding mud engines, putting in hemlock sticks for blow-pipes; besides cutting many a good caper, and uttering all sorts of drolleries for the benefit of other little boys, who like himself swarm round, too poor to go to school, if school there were--but schools there were none.
The boys called him "Geordie Steve."
A lad is wanted to shut the coal-yard gates after work is over. Geordie offers his services and gets the post, earning by it twopence a day. A neighbour hires him to hoe turnips at fourpence. He is thankful to earn a bit, for his parents are poor, and every little helps. He sees work ahead, however, more to his taste. What? He longs to be big enough to go and work at the coal-pits with his father. For the home of this little fellow, as you already perceive, is in a coal region. It is in the coal district of Newcastle, in the north-eastern part of England.
I suppose you never visited a colliery? Coal is found in beds and veins under ground. Deep holes are made, down which the miners go and dig it out; it is hoisted out by means of steam-engines. These holes are called shafts. The pit-men have two enemies to encounter down in the coal-pits--water, and a kind of gas which explodes on touching the flame of a candle. The water has to be pumped out; and miners are now provided with a lamp, called a safety-lamp, which is covered with a fine wire gauze to keep the gas away from the flame.
The coal is brought up from the pit in baskets, loaded on waggons running on tram-roads, and sent to the sheds. Tram-roads were a sort of wooden railway. A colliery is a busy and odd-looking spot.
Geordie's family lived in one room--father, mother, four boys, and two girls. Snug quarters, one would think; but the working-men of England at that time had smaller wages and poorer homes than they now have--for Geordie was born in 1781, in the little village of Wylam, seven miles from Newcastle, and his full name is George Stephenson.
James, an elder brother, is "picker;" and by-and-by George is old enough to be a picker too, going with his father and brother to their daily tasks, like a man. To clear the coal of stones and dross is their business. There are a number of pits around, and each one has a name,--"Dolly Pit," "Water-run Pit," and so on.
I do not know how long he was picker, but we next find him driving a gin-horse, at a pit two miles off, across the fields. Away he goes in the early morning, gladdened all along by many bird songs. George and the birds are fast friends. He knows where their nests are in the hedgerows, and watches over them with fatherly affection. At home he has tame birds, whose pretty, knowing ways are the wonder of the neighbourhood. For many years a tame blackbird was as much one of the family as George himself, coming and going at pleasure, and roosting at night over his head. Sometimes it spent the summer in the woods, but was sure to come back with cold weather, to share his care and crumbs through the winter.
George, too, had a famous breed of rabbits; and as for his dog, it was one of the most accomplished and faithful creatures in the district. In fact, the boy had an insight into dumb-brute nature, as we shall find he had into other things, that gave him power over it--a power which he never abused, but used kindly and well.
George rapidly shot ahead of his father, a kind old man, who always stayed fireman, while his boy climbed one round after another up the ladder of promotion. At seventeen we find him plugman. What duty is that? A plugman has charge of a pumping-engine, and when the water in the pit is below the suction-holes, he goes down the shaft and plugs the tube, in order to make the pump more easily draw. The post required more skill and knowledge of machinery than any he had filled before, and he proved himself equal to it.
Indeed, he loves his engine as he loves his birds. It is a pet with him. He keeps it in prime order. He takes it to pieces, and cleans it, and studies it; pries into the whys and wherefores, and is never satisfied until he understands every spring and cog of the machinery, and gets the mastery of it. You never find him idling away his time. In leisure moments he is at his old kink, moulding clay engines, and putting new thoughts into them.
He wished to know the history of engines, and how they were thought out at first. Somebody told him about Watt, the father of steam-power, and that there were books which would satisfy his curiosity. Books! what good would books do poor George? He cannot read. Not read? No. He is eighteen, and hardly knows his letters. Few of the colliers did. They were generally an ignorant, hard-working, clannish set of men, whose pay-day was a holiday, when their hard-won earnings were squandered at cock-fights and in ale-houses.
Oh! it was so wonderful to read, he thought. It was to open the gates into great fields of knowledge. Read he must. The desire grew upon him stronger and stronger. In the neighbouring hamlet of Welbottle, old Robin Cowens taught an evening school.
"I'll go," cried George.
"And I too," echoed Tommy Musgrove, a fellow-workman, quite carried away by George's enthusiasm.
Now they went to Robin's school three evenings a week. I do not know how it was with Tommy, but old Robin never had a better scholar than George; indeed, he soon outlearned his master! His schooling cost him threepence a week, and, poor as it was, put into his hand the two keys of knowledge, reading and writing.
These mastered, he longs to use them. Andrew Robertson opens an evening school nearer than Welbottle, and Andrew proposes to teach arithmetic, a branch George is anxious to grapple with next. "And he took to figurin' wonderful," said Master Andrew, speaking of his new scholar, who soon left his classmates far behind. And no wonder. Every spare moment to George was more precious than gold dust, and was used accordingly. When not on duty, he sits by his engine and works out his sums. No beer-shop ever enticed him to its cups; no cock-fight ever tempted him to be its spectator. He hated everything low and vulgar.
Andrew was proud of his pupil, and when George removed to another pit, the old schoolmaster shifted his quarters and followed him. His books did not damage his interest in business. Was the plugman going to stay plugman? No. Bill Coe, a friend of his advanced to be a brakeman, offered to show George. The other workmen objected. And one in particular stopped the working of the engine when George took hold of it; "for," he cried angrily, "Stephenson can't brake, and is too clumsy ever to learn."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page