Swift as is the steamer, the rail-car is doubly and trebly swift. Some trains in England run at the rate of seventy miles an hour. This is as fast as a balloon moves through the air, or a storm wind. It is the most rapid means of travel ever known among men, and it is only within the past thirty or forty years that the railroad has reached this rapid rate of speed. The engine used on the rail-car is smaller and more compact than the machinery of the steamer. Its piston, crank, and boiler must all be confined within a very limited space. It is the most wonderful and elegant of all the labors of the mechanic. Small, low, almost insignificant, it possesses a giant's strength, and may often be seen rushing with its long train of cars along the banks of the Hudson or over the New Jersey flats, swift as the wind.

Its inventor was Oliver Evans, an American, born at Newport, Delaware, in 1775. In 1804, he built a steam-engine that ran on the road a mile and a half to the Schuylkill River, where it was placed on a scow, and made to work its own passage to Philadelphia. But the man who first placed the locomotive on rails, and showed how it could be made to draw a train of cars, was George Stephenson, an Englishman, born in 1781. His father worked as fireman in a colliery. The son was brought up in poverty, destined to a life of labor. He was a tall, stout, healthy boy, industrious and sober. He had no education but what he gained at a night school. Rough, scanty fare and constant toil were the companions of his youth. But his mind was always active, and he was always inventing some rare machine. He was a fireman at fifteen; he learned to make shoes; he became a brakeman, and at last an engineer. He married at nineteen, but was so poor that when his father fell into distress, and he had paid his debts, he thought of emigrating to America, but was prevented by his want of money. Had he succeeded we might have had no railroads and engines for another century. He staid in England making clocks, engines, and various machines, and found employment in James Watt's factory. There he began to study the steam-engine. He lost no opportunity of study and improvement. His remarkable intellect was eager to get knowledge, and he became, when he was about forty, a well-known engineer, and the maker of steam-engines. As early as 1812 he had planned a railroad, and even built an imperfect locomotive, but many a year was to pass before his plan could be carried out, and lines of railway laid from city to city.

In 1812, Fulton's steamboats were running on the Hudson, and travel by water was shortened. On land, the stage-coach went from Jersey City to Philadelphia in a day, and the journey from New York to Boston was a long one. In 1881 we go to Albany in four or five hours, and to Boston in six or eight. If our railways were more firmly built, it would be possible to reach Philadelphia in one hour, and Boston in two or three. But when George Stephenson, the author of these wonders, proposed his plan for a railway, he met with few to aid him. His locomotive of 1814—very imperfect, but a great improvement over that built by Evans—was ten years afterward employed on a railway eight miles long at Darlington. The railway succeeded, and the next step was to project one to run from Liverpool, the famous sea-port, to Manchester, the centre of manufactures. A huge bog or swamp, called Chat Moss, lay between the two cities. It was thought impossible to build a track over its treacherous surface; but Stephenson and his friends persevered, and at last, to the wonder of the age, in 1830 a firm road, the first of the railways of any importance, lay ready for use. But how was it possible to move a train to so great a distance? The locomotives were still so imperfect that they seemed almost worthless. Stephenson alone was able to overcome the difficulty, and when in 1829 the directors proposed a prize of £500 for the best and swiftest engines, he produced his Rocket.

The Rocket was the first of those wonderful machines that now almost run around the globe. It was a small, imperfect, awkward locomotive; but it was the first to prove successful. It is still kept for exhibition in the museum at Kensington, London, as a memorial of the maker and his work. Stephenson now set himself to improve and enlarge his engines and railways. He became the founder of a new system of travel. He produced new inventions constantly, and his great and powerful mind placed him at the head of the railway interests of England. He grew famous and wealthy, but was always honest, modest, and true. Nothing could be more unpopular than his railways. They were called "nuisances" by respectable lawyers. Every one foretold their failure. It was asserted that they would soon be abandoned and fall to ruin. Some said they would starve the poor, destroy canals, close the taverns, crush thousands in fearful accidents, and cover the land with horror. It was, said others, attempting a thing nature had forbidden, and on which Providence would never smile. But Stephenson went on building railways. They proved very profitable, and were soon adopted in Europe and America.

It is only fifty-one years since George Stephenson's Rocket began to run from Liverpool to Manchester. Since that time the whole civilized world has adopted his invention, and travels and traffics by its aid. The locomotive climbs up the Andes in Peru, runs beneath the Alps at Mont Cenis, is imitated in Japan, and mobbed in China. The Chinese recently tore up a railway because they thought it the work of evil spirits. Fifty years ago, English mobs threatened to destroy Stephenson's railways, and his men worked under the protection of a guard. There are now twenty thousand miles of railway in England alone, and eighty thousand in the United States.

Stephenson lived until 1848, and died honored by his countrymen and all the world as one of its chief benefactors. Like Watt and Fulton, he was the son of a hard-working father. He inherited a clear mind. He educated himself, going to school at night. He was never discouraged and never repined. He never lived for money alone, but was chiefly anxious to be useful to his fellow-men. Every one who sees the railway train rush by, laden with food, goods, and passengers, should remember George Stephenson. With Fulton and Watt and Evans he has made steam the most potent servant of mankind.