fellows, that won't make a row when the bills | or angry recrimination!" No. What if Mrs. come in."

'Never mentioned it, 'pon honor! The old lady must have told-never breathed it to a living soul! How did you find it out?" said Mr. Tompkins, greatly astonished that Mr. Ellis should get wind of a little negotiation hedged in by so many privacies.

Ellis was right, and Bob and Mrs. Jenkins wrong? What if a man could support a wife on two thousand a year? What if the Quaker bonnet was his wife-oh! madness-and they were boarding up with the Ellises, in a large room opening on the piazza, and she was only going down with him to buy herself some gloves, and gaiters, and a work-basket, with a twentydollar bill he had presented to her! oh, rapture!

But Mr. Ellis did not know her name even, The Quaker bonnet moved forward. A nor the captain when he came round to collect dainty little boot peeped out from the full, not the tickets. To oblige his friend, Mr. Ellis intoo full, skirts that were raised just clear of the quired of him in a confidential undertone, and dirty plank at the gangway. Mr. Tompkins was the captain-the Goth-turned directly round right. The young lady looked up for a moment. to see what young lady was meant, to the great Such a fresh, sweet young face! Such nicely-mortification of Mr. Tompkins, who was sure she fitting fawn-colored gloves, balancing the para- would be offended at the outset, and naturally sol so airily, set off the hands, not the parasol, enough at finding herself the object of remark by a full under-sleeve gathered in a large puff from strangers. at the wrist! A graceful black mantilla-Mr. Politeness forbade him to follow her off the Tompkins was so particular about a lady's dress-boat, up Chambers Street to Stewart's, where a neat little checked silk, blue and white, not too dressy, or too plain, either for the boat or the city to which she was bound! "Well, there," as Mr. Tompkins remarked to his friend, "if I was going to choose a lady's dress, I couldn't get it up better myself! Ain't it sweet, somehow!" "Do you suppose she'd go and run in debt for frocks and bonnets?" said Mr. Ellis, returning to his friend's last inquiry. "Does she look as if she'd do a thing of that kind?"

Mr. Tompkins thought there might be an exception. No, she did not, he was forced to say. She looked, if one could go by looks, to be one of those reasonable, admirable women who could ask her husband right out for a twentydollar bill to shop with when she wanted it, and spend neither more nor less.

he was sure she was going, and listening to the name and address she gave the shopman, while he thumped on the counter with his pencil and called "cash." He felt himself rash enough even for this at one moment, but remembered the next that "discretion was the better part of valor, and virtue its own reward."

He found the truth of those original and valuable reflections the same evening, when, having braved the astonishment and wrath of Mrs. Jenkins, left a message for his laundress with the chambermaid, and armed himself with a carpet-bag, he made his way to the little steamer, saluting the principal officer as he came on board with the "Ah, how are ye, captain ?" of old and familiar acquaintance.

The blue silk dress was there before him-the brown bonnet which he had interposed as a mental shield to the wrath of Mrs. Jenkins, and her parting hint at the probability of his returning with fever and ague, shaded the same fresh, lovely face, not heated and flushed and jaded, as other ladies appeared by comparison. And then-but here description fails us-im

"So does my wife. Pooh, pooh, old fellow! it's the daily press, and landladies that don't like to run the risk of losing a man who pays up regular, that are to blame for all that stuff and nonsense. The newspapers have certain seasons of the year for preaching female extravagancethey come round exact, if you'll only notice it, when politics are dull, or a panic in the stock-agine his emotions, when, hovering in the danmarket desirable. It doesn't cost me so much, by considerable, as it did when I was a bachelor. Jones says just so. My wife's the most economical little creature that ever did a Saturday's marketing.'

"There she comes!"

So she did emerge from the door close by them, the blue silk dress, the gaiters, the gloves, sustaining themselves on nearer view; so did the face, softly shadowed by a lace frill inside the brown silk bonnet-not a dark stupid brown, you must understand.

Mr. Tompkins, modest to a degree, could not help letting his gaze dwell for a moment on that animated picture.

"Those large gray eyes, with their dark lashes, ever flash vindictively? Those dimples, that smile, ever disappear in fretful discontent

gerous but fascinating vicinity, Mr. Ellis having taken the cars, and he being thus freed to follow his own sweet will-his friend Joe Coldbath having accosted him with a "How are you, my boy?" turned at once to the young lady, and exclaiming "Good gracious, Addy!" kissed her-yes, actually kissed her before every body before him!

No wonder she blushed and drew back, and said, "Oh, don't!-how could you?" But what right, even if they were ten times alone in the most secluded parlor, had Joe Coldbath to kiss that dimpled cheek?

"Here you've been all this while, and G. Albert too-know him?-Oh! allow me-Mr. Tompkins, my cousin Miss Burton; intimate friend of mine, Addy—and I've been as solitary as-as-"

"A Shanghai in a barn-yard!" suggested Miss Burton, in the most provokingly merry way, while the dimples came and went, and the smile was for him, this time-yes, all his own. Silence was the only strain of eloquence Mr. Tompkins could command at such short notice. "Don't be too hard on a fellow; come now," said Mr. Coldbath, surveying his figure with an air of peculiar satisfaction. "Never thought of looking for you. Stupid, wasn't it, when I was going up to stay over Sunday? How's Uncle Sam and grandma ?"

self obliged to refuse the Primes, as they came just one day too late. Their room, the choice of the house, opening upon a balcony with a dressing-closet attached, was already engaged to Mr. and Mrs. G. Albert Tompkins-and wedding-cards, in a glazed envelope, accompanied the application.

A charming room it was, too, when the little extras ordered by Mr. Tompkins had arrived, and found their place in the judicious arrangement of the bride, who toiled as she never had toiled before to get every thing in order before Albert should return from town the evening after their arrival.

It was a short interview-very. They were within a mile of the wharf when the introduction took place; but he had spoken to her, he Mrs. Ellis quite satisfied her by the commendwas acquainted with her from that time forth.ation she bestowed upon her labors. Mrs. Green It gave him the privilege of speaking to her the remarked that she never had seen one of her next time they should encounter each other, and boarders' rooms look so much like home. That who knew but some day she would be quite was just the look, with the new matting and alone, and he should have the good fortune white curtains Mrs. Green had contributed in which now befell the unappreciating Coldbath their honor-because, as she said, "she took of opening his arm to escort her on shore, and some credit for the match somehow, Mr. Tompprotecting her from the crowd of passengers and kins having done all his courting from there boat-hands that always jostle one so the five the summer before"-the easy chair, Mr. Tompminutes before landing? kins's bridal present to himself, the sewing chair He took a retrospect of the last twenty-four and work-table he had chosen at the same time hours before he retired that night, sitting, with for the happy little woman, who had drawn them his neckerchief laid across his knee and his shirt-up to the window, and laid a little cambric colcollar meditatively unbuttoned, by the open win-lar and gold thimble on the open box, which dow of what was for six weeks at least his own was the only bit of "saw-dust" about the room, room. How small and contracted it seemed for she had not set a stitch. Her bird hung in to the one occupied by his friends below, who the window. Their united libraries made quite had a lounge, and a work-table, and every thing a display on the large what-not, though the secomfortable! What a look a woman did con- lections were by no means rare or classic, and trive to give to a room; and he thought of his vases, bronzes, and trinkets generally-a part last glance at the one he had so long occupied of their large stock of bridal presents were scatat 1081 Tenth Street, the number of "traps" tered about wherever there was a place for any lying about, the cheap novels, and empty ci- thing to stand. gar-boxes, and porter-bottles, covered with the dust that accumulated so miraculously through the day, if the chamber-maid did her duty ev- | can." ery morning by the furniture, as she vowed she did.

Mrs. Ellis said, "Charming! but you might as well enjoy such little elegancies while you

Mrs. Tompkins wondered, "Why not always ?"

Mrs. Ellis said, "Oh!" but concluded not to explain. She thought what ducks and drakes Franky would make of Bohemian glass inkstands and carved chessmen, if they indulged in such trifles.

How he did admire the country—the foliage and the moonlight, the river and the Palisades! He wondered what kind of a man Joe Coldbath's Uncle Tom was, and whether he "required a character" of every young man he allowed to visit his daughter. No discordant sound broke "Oh, I expect to have such comfort here!" upon the quiet of the hour, though the window | said the bride, too happy to question what might was open below. So there could be children be withheld. "You must bring your sewing who slept all night, and did not require their often, Mrs. Ellis, and sit with me, I feel so well father to walk up and down with them en dés-acquainted with you. Albert has told me so habille. And Mrs. Ellis had kindly demon- much about you and Mr. Ellis; he says if it strated to him that evening that they had actu-wasn't for Mr. Ellis I shouldn't have been here ally lived on eighteen hundred the first year they were married-and what was that old proverb about "What man has done man can do?" No wonder that, with such absorbing topics of meditation, he sat up much later than was good for him, and let his watch run down for the first time in five years.

Time runs on, however, though watches stop; and when Mrs. Green, of the "Chestnut Grove House," Tarrytown, came to receive applications for her rooms the ensuing season, she found her

now, he had such horrid ideas about women !— only think of it!"

"Oh yes, indeed, he was quite a heathen!" "But he's altered his mind entirely, now; and he's so fond of me-oh, you have no idea what an excellent husband he makes!"

"Let me see-you have been married almost six weeks," said Mrs. Ellis, going back with an effort of memory to their own honey-moon; "well, I dare say he does."

"But if you don't commence dressing pretty

soon you won't be ready to go down with us to bad the Sailor and Robinson Crusoe, and scatter meet him."

"Oh dear, you are ready now! but, Mrs. Ellis, I was going to tell you one thing more-” "Not another word!" and Mrs. Tompkins had reason to congratulate herself on her friend's decision, for she was just fastening her brooch when the bell of the Mountain Fay was heard. Mr. Tompkins was walking the deck impatiently, almost sorry that he had been sentimental enough to go up in the boat, "just to see how it seemed," and to sit in the same place where he had first met Addy. Half an hour was a great deal to lose, even for this satisfaction.

Mr. Ellis agreed to the proposition, but added that it had been his remarkable fortune to know the " one man" out of several hundred. "It's generally found so at first."

Mr. Tompkins took no notice of this implied insinuation that his case was by no means singular. "They say the first year is so hard, too, to get along with each other. Well, if it is, all I can say is, I wonder what the rest are! How time does fly, though! here we've been married five weeks and three days! Positively, it doesn't seem like a week!"

"Don't find it so monotonous as you did?" "Oh, don't mention it!" and he waved his handkerchief in return to a similar signal from shore. "Just see! she's put on that very dear old blue and white silk! She knows how I admire her in it! How much a woman will do to please her husband! won't she, now?"

"Why, yes; I suppose it is doing a great deal to put on a last year's frock when she has twenty new ones," said Mr. Ellis, as they strode over the ten steps between them and happiness. "What's all that?" demanded his wife, catching the last words of the colloquy. "Who's accused of having twenty new frocks? Has Mr. Tompkins relapsed into last year's heresies?"

"Not at all, not at all!" and Mr. Ellis drew her arm in his, leaving the lovers to follow by themselves. "We were only remarking that domestic life was a succession of mutual sacrifices; and Mr. Tompkins prefers it, even at that cost, to a bachelor existence."

the crumbs saved from his scanty dinner so that the birds could pick them up. His wife, Mabel, was a delicate, ailing woman, somewhat troubled with the vapors, but in the main kindly and sensible. "Honest folk were they," says a neighbor, in his rough Northumbrian dialect, "but they had little to come and go upon, and were sore haudden doon in the world."

Children came to them-six in twice as many years-of whom George, the second son, was born on the 9th of June, 1781. The colliery people can not reckon upon a permanent home; they "follow the coal;" when one pit is exhausted they must betake themselves to another. Men now have some reason to point out among the heaps of ashes, coal-dust, and cinders, the little clay-floored house near the village of Wylam, in which lived four families, where George Stephenson was born; and another cottage with a single room, in the neighboring village of Dewly, to which "Old Bob," following the coal, removed.

With so many mouths to fill, wages twelve shillings a week, and bread at war prices, there must be no idle hands. So little George was thought lucky when he found favor in the eyes of a woman whose cows had the right of grazing along the wagon road. For twopence a day he was to see that the milky mothers kept out of the way of the wagons, and did not trespass on the bounds allotted to others; he was also to shut the gates at night after the last coalwagon had passed. By-and by, when his legs grew long enough to straddle the furrows, he was promoted, with doubled wages, to the more laborious work of leading the plow-horses, weeding turnips, and the like.

But the boy was ambitious of higher things. He would become an engine-man like his father; and when he had grown up to be a great barelegged boy, he found work in the colliery. First he was set to picking the stone out from the coal, and then was promoted to driving the ginhorse, with wages at the rate of eightpence a day. When he was fourteen, he was taken on by his father as assistant foreman. It seemed somewhat suspicious that such promotion, with six shillings a week pay, should have fallen to such a lad, and he was in constant trepidation lest the owner of the colliery should think him too small a boy to earn so great wages; and he was wont to hide himself when the dreaded owner went his rounds of inspection. These were the days of the great Napoleon wars; WO generations ago Robert Stephenson, bread was dear, trade uncertain, labor precarifamiliarly known as "Old Bob," lived near ous, and the workmen of England were badly Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the northern coal re-off, notwithstanding the great demand for ablegion of England. It was said that the family had once possessed property; but he was poor enough now, his occupation being that of fireman to a colliery steam-engine, by which he earned the magnificent sum of twelve shillings a week. He was a thin, care-worn, gentle man, who would gather the boys around his engine fire, telling them wonderful stories about Sin

THE FATHER OF RAILWAYS.

TWO

I.

bodied men to be food for gunpowder did much to keep down the competition in the ranks of peaceful industry. But the Stephenson family lived in tolerable comfort. "Old Bob" kept his engine fires burning and received his weekly twelve shillings, the two older boys together earned as much, the younger lads were pickers and wheelers, and the girls helped their mother

at home. There were no idle hands, and the family, all told, earned some seven or eight dollars a week.

George soon outgrew all fears that his size would stand in the way of his promotion. At fifteen he was a stout bony lad, who could lift a heavier weight and fling a hammer further than any of his comrades. In another year, as he went one Saturday night to receive his wages, he was told that they had been raised to the full sum of twelve shillings a week. "I am a made man for life!" he exclaimed, joyfully, as he left the foreman's office.

In another year he was raised to the more responsible post of engine-man. Instead of merely feeding the machine, he was to keep it in order and superintend its working.

He had always shown a decided mechanical turn. While watching the widow's cows he had amused himself with making clay engines, with pipes and conduits of the hollow stalks of the hemlock plant. The steam-engine became his pet: he was never tired of studying its mighty play, docile as a child and strong as a giant. The greater portion of his spare time was spent in taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again. He soon understood it thoroughly, and was rarely obliged to summon the colliery engineer to remedy any defect.

intervals while his engine was faithfully doing its appointed work. Once at least, this acquisition afforded him a pleasure quite beyond the addition which it furnished to his regular wages. Pretty Fanny Henderson intrusted him with the task of new-soling her own shoes. It was a labor of love, and as he carried them home one Sunday afternoon, he could not refrain from summoning a companion to admire what a capital job he had made of them. No knight of old romance, whom his lady had deigned to grace with her glove or scarf, was ever more, or more justly proud, than was George Stephenson in the possession of these cherished shoes. The first guinea which he ever saved, in the ownership of which he thought himself a rich man, was earned by the exercise of the craft of St. Crispin. This guinea became the parent of more, which enabled him, at the age of twenty-one, to furnish a modest home for Fanny, who now became his wife. This was at the colliery of Willington, some fifteen miles away, where he had obtained employment as brakeman-a position still higher than that of engineman, which he had previously filled. Thither rode bridegroom and bride, in good old-fashioned style, upon one stout farm-horse, borrowed for the occasion, while groomsman and bridesmaid accompanied them upon another.

The young man had always been sober and industrious. Once, indeed, the bully of the pit insulted him and challenged him to fight. His friends tried to dissuade him. "Are you goin to feight Nelson ?" they asked, in alarm. "Ay, never fear for me; I'll feight him." Nelson went into training for the battle; Stephenson kept on at work as usual, and one evening, after the day's work was over, the "feight" took place. In a few rounds the tough, agile young brakeman polished off the burly bully in capital style. This was George Stephenson's first and last fight.

At eighteen George Stephenson was a fullgrown man, earning a man's wages, having the entire charge of a steam-engine, and master of all the details of its working and construction. Though he knew much, he was ignorant of that which to an American seems the first step in all knowledge. He had never learned to read. Few of his fellow-laborers were better taught. Napoleon was now in the first flush of his fame, and there was no more eager listener than George Stephenson, when some favored collier read aloud, by the engine fire, the newspaper reports of his brilliant Italian campaign. These papers told also, now and then, of the wonder- By day the young husband attended diliful steam-engines of Watt and Boulton, and the gently to his break, filling up every spare moyoung engine-man knew that if he could learn ment by making or mending shoes, and cutting to read he might learn all about these fa- out clothes for the pitmen-for he had taken up mous inventions. A poor schoolmaster taught the trade of tailor as well as that of cobbler. By a poor school not far from the colliery. Thith- night, in his humble home, he tried as best he er George repaired three evenings in the week, might to master the principles of mechanics. after twelve hours' hard work. In a year, at Like many another self-taught mechanic he the cost of threepence a week, he had learned worked at a Perpetual Motion, and of course to read after a fashion, and to write his name. like others he failed. Accident put him in the To reading and writing he determined to add way of turning his mechanical ingenuity to betarithmetic. His master set him sums on his ter account. Coming home one night he found slate, to be wrought out at odd moments during a scene of sad confusion. The cottage chimthe day. In the evening he took back his solu- ney had been on fire; the neighbors had extintions for examination, and received new prob-guished it by pouring down water, and the room lems for the next day. In a short time he mas- had been flooded. Worst of all, his fine eighttered the "four fundamental rules" and "Re-day clock stood still, the hands mutely pointing duction," and reached the magic "Rule of Three." Beyond this the humble acquirements of his teacher did not extend.

At twenty George Stephenson took lessons in some other departments of knowledge. He fell in love with a pretty servant-girl; and, besides, learned to mend, and finally to make, shoes, at

to the hour of the disaster. The mingled soot and steam had found its way within the case, and clogged and rusted the wheels and pinions. He was told that he must call in the watchmaker to repair the damage. No: he would do it himself, and save his money. He tried and succeeded, and the clock was soon ticking