CHOICE EXTRA

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 257, 17 February 1877, Page 2

CHOICE EXTRA

THE GROWTH OF ENGINE. Alluding to the Railway at Darlington on the 27th Septenrror just fifty years after the first starting ofH Stephenson's long-fought-for railway, theH Times says :—"Railways are easy to worljM in these days—at least the making of rail.H ways and even of travelling stock. TheH largest size and most perfectly formed railH is made and finished in about two minutes, H and almost any number of locomotives H and carriages can be delivered to order inH a month or two. But few know what a I work of education it was at first; what H watchfulness, what invention, what fond H parental instinct, the locomotive required. H It reads like the story of a nursery, or the H biography of a child, how it was that Ste- H phenson assisted the draught of the chim-H ney by letting in the escape of the cylin- H der ; how he cured the asthmatic engine; I how he made one meal, that is one ton of H coal, do the work of six ; how he continu- H ally assisted the growth and brought out I the powers of this noble ' imp of fame.' H Fi-om his childhood he had been accus-1 turned to fashion the child of his future I years, and put his whole soul into it. But H they who live in manufacturing districts I know too well how many a born genius, I has been shipwrecked on some folly or I other. All know how easily a man of I talent, education, and friends, may be a I trifler, and pass away, leaving no mark I behind him. George Stephenson has left I his mark on the world. That mark is a I network of tens of thousands of iron I ways, rendering the whole service of the I globe as near and neighbourly by the best I measure of distance—that is time —as a I small state or ordinary capital. He has ■ comprised us all within a family circle, I and it is our fault if we indulge in family I jars. Wherever we go and look on the I earth itself, there we see the monument I of our common benefactor. The whole I line—for all are, in fact, one now—is his I grave, and his best memorial. But if we I ask for the old home, the small beginning, I the ancestral stock from which all these I world-wide branches spread, it is the I humble little line from Darlington to I Stockton opened this day fifty years ago. I The growth of an oak from an acorn, or I the transformation of a continent by the I introduction of a plough, will hardly I strike the imagination so much as the I vastness and rapidity of growth before us, I young as it must still be to I