wish I may live to see the day, though that I can scarcely hope for, as I know how slow all human progress is, and with what difficulty I have been able to get the locomotive adopted, notwithstanding my more than successful experiments at Killingworth."

The Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened in 1825, and in the same year Stephenson had advanced so rapidly in estimation that he was appointed chief engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at a salary of a thousand a year. The most eminent engineers of the day declared that the portion of the railway traversing Chat Moss could never be made; but Stephenson mastered extraordinary difficulties and accomplished the work to admiration. Robert Stephenson constructed the "Rocket" locomotive, which was the first adopted for working the railway; that line, opened to the public on the 15th of September, 1830, being the immediate forerunner of all the great railways of this country and of the whole world.

THE PRINCE OF ENGINEERING.

With the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Stephenson's prosperity was permanently established. Henceforth, he was everywhere hailed as a prince of engineering, making hundreds of miles of railways, perfecting many more inventions, becoming owner of mines and works, realizing triumphs far beyond his most sanguine expectations, in which his son Robert fully shared both in genius and success.

THE HAND OF DEATH.

And so, full of honours almost beyond comparison, George Stephenson died in his own home, Tapton House, Chesterfield, on the 12th of August, 1848. His remains repose in the Trinity Church Chesterfield, near which is the Stephenson Memorial Hall.

SMALL DETAILS.

Superficial observation might induce the idea that a man of such great achievements was above small details, but his motto from beginning to end "Take care of little things and great things will take care of themselves," an intelligent application of the motto being the practice of true thrift.

was

SIMPLICITY OF CHARACTER.

It was one of his proud boasts that he had dined with the Queen in her palace, and also with the poorest of men under a hedge; and he never sought to qualify for a moment the fact of his very humble origin, thrift having been a most conspicuous element of his success.

AN ONLY CHILD.

Upon that point it may be useful to remember that he had but one surviving child. Had he been incumbered with a numerous family of young children, it seems inevitable that his heroic efforts to educate his son must have broken down under the pressure, and that Robert, who died so soon after his father, in October, 1850, would never have had the national honour, as he had, of

interment in Westminster Abbey, where his monument marks the career of one who had the advantage of being an only child.

INFLUENCE OF WIVES.

None the less does the reflection arise that, at the most critical period of his life, George Stephenson had a thrifty woman for his first wife, who, as such, materially contributed to the foundation of his success as long as she lived. It is not given to every man to be so fortunate, and this is the more striking, because he married a second and a third time. His second wife seems to have been a worthy successor of his first, but the widow who survived him, though left with all the furniture and plate, and eight hundred per annum, outran her income the very first year of her widowhood, and applied to her son-inlaw for an increase of her allowance. It is painful evidence of the marriage

with her having been very ill-advised that Robert coldly replied by referring his mother-in-law to his solicitor. Had she been the first wife of the three, and the mother of many children after her own likeness, would the names of those great Stephensons have been recorded as incentives to thrift?

CHARLES DICKENS'S SENTIMENTS.

In examining the early career of most famous men, when we have the opportunity, we can usually trace the thread of thrift running through the fabric of their otherwise broad experience. Throughout the active life and chequered fancy of Charles Dickens, we find the idea of thrift in operation, leading him on, in spite of liberal expenditure, to a position of opulence, and no one who has considered his characters, of Richard Carstone and Harold Skimpole, together with many others, can fail to discover that Dickens had a profound contempt for unthriftiness and improvidence.

RICHARD WHITTINGTON.

Perhaps nothing has been so done to death as the life of Whittington, but it has its solid merits worth dwelling upon. He was the younger son of William de Whityngdon, lord of the manor of Pauntley, in Gloucestershire. He was born about the middle of the fourteenth century, and, being a younger son, was not provided for in any way. Under these circumstances, he determined to seek his fortune elsewhere, and walked all the way to London. Some of his would-be historians say that he got lifts in carriers' waggons, but that cannot be so, for there were no waggons at that time, so that a lift now and then on a pack-horse was the utmost he could have availed himself of. When we consider that printing was not discovered till after his death, we may perhaps imagine what a fund of enterprise and determination the lad must have had to start upon such an unknown world as he did, and how he got education enough to engage in any kind of business is a mystery. Arrived in London, he managed to get apprenticed to Fitzwarren, a mercer. Having to live in the house of his master, it seems that he failed to get on good terms with the cook, who led him an awful life, from which he fled with the intention of leaving London on further adventures; but, sitting down at the foot of Highgate Hill, the wind, that happened to blow from the south, +

brought with it the sound of Bow Bells. Being thus reminded of what he was leaving, being already weary enough, remembering the hard toils of his former long journey, and having the steep hill before him, he was effectually cured of his pet, returned to his master's house, and stuck to business ever afterwards. His return was true courage, worthy of all imitation, and should be a life's lesson to every lad who gets into a temper and forms foolish resolutions that ought to be abandoned. The result was the acquisition of great wealth, no doubt resulting from exceptional thrift and good management, the best evidence we have of his opulence, and the estimation in which he was held, being that he was really thrice Lord Mayor; that is, in 1397, 1406, and 1419. He seems to have acquired very great profit as mercer to the Court, as it is on record that he supplied the silks for the royal princesses of his time. Perhaps it is an evidence of the character of his thriftiness that he married his master's daughter, Alice.

NO CHILDREN, versus LARGE FAMILIES.

Perhaps another secret of his exceptional success, was that he had no children, which is one of the many cautions against large families, or families at all that become costly drawbacks to opportunities for advancement. It is evident, however, that he hardly knew what to do with his money, for we find him expending it in the two incongruous objects of re-building Newgate Prison and the nave of Westminster Abbey. He died in 1423, and, though his name has been associated with many ridiculous fictions, his career affords us a dim glimpse of individual life in the Middle Ages, well worthy of remembrance.

GUY'S HOSPITAL.

Another instance of thrift in the metropolis may be referred to as an example to be avoided, rather than worthy of imitation, as it shows that wealth may be attained unworthily, without any appearance of pleasure or personal advantage. The case is that of Thomas Guy. He was the son of a lighterman, of Horsleydown, and was born in 1644. He became a bookseller, and got much of his wealth by importing Bibles from Holland, prior to arrangements for printing them in England. His position and special experience enabled him to afterwards make a contract with reference to the Bibles printed by the University of Oxford. While cultivating this sort of traffic, he also made much money by buying up seamen's prize tickets, and jobbing in South Sea stock. All the while his habits were painfully penurious, absolutely sitting in the dark to avoid the cost of burning a candle, and his course of business smacked of the disreputable. Without wife, or family, or friends to care for him, he is said to have amassed half a million of money, £200,000 of which he devoted to the foundation of Guy's Hospital, which is an enduring monument to his questionable fame.

TURNING LEISURE TO PROFIT.

Leisure time is one of the subjects that has caused much controversy of late years. Many persons who pass for old-fashioned people seem to think that most of the weaknesses of modern society arise out of so much leisure.

Shorter working hours, early closing on Saturdays, bank holidays, and a multitude of other effeminate irregularities, are said by those old-fashioned people to be simply mischievous-so many more opportunities for idleness, and drunkenness, and waste of money. There are plenty of new-fashioned people who do their best to justify old-fashioned objections to the increased leisure that has been steadily growing for a generation or so. But there is plenty of old-fashioned evidence that, though the majority neither appreciate nor use wisely the greater leisure they enjoy as compared to their fathers, there are worthy instances amongst the minority whose life and conduct go very far to justify all the modern innovations upon hours of labour and. business. There are men who know how to employ their leisure creditably and profitably; and though examples of results have not yet come down to us, we may rest assured that there are those amongst us who are teaching to themselves practical lessons in the thrift of time, for the greater allowance of which many of their forerunners would have been truly thankful.

WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN.

William Fairbairn is one of the examples of those who, while practising thrift in general, made a fortune by diligently applying thrift to such time as he could call his own. He was born, in 1789, at Kelso, in Roxburghshire. There was a parish school there at which Fairbairn got the usual imperfect knowledge of reading and writing then customarily imparted in Scotland to the sons of working parents. With this small fund of the barest elements of knowledge, he was put apprentice to a working mechanic in the iron trade. Had he been of the ordinary stuff of which unthrifty boys are made, he would probably have developed into a working smith; but he was made of different metal to the generality. So, while his fellow apprentices were playing pitch and toss, or engaging in other equally intellectual pursuits, he engaged himself out of shop hours in reading. He was lucky as well as studiously disposed. Some people say there is no such thing as luck, but that is a misstatement of the case. There are plenty of boys and men who do not know how to use their luck when it comes to them, and others who do. The true philosophy is to turn luck to account.

The luck of Fairbairn was of two kinds. He was so lodged that he could find sufficient retirement for study. It does not fall to every lad to have such luck. He may thank his stars who gets it; and they are the truest friends of a boy, who, finding he is disposed to be studious, make such arrangements for him as will give him opportunity to indulge his bent. The other luck of Fairbairn was that, somehow or other, there were thrown in his way the introductory books of Euclid, which is an opportunity by no means common to lads apprenticed to rough mechanical trades. So, while his mates and acquaintances took their pleasure in the pursuit of brainless games, with the usual allowance of quarrelling and fighting, Fairbairn took his pleasure in mastering those first principles of Euclid which laid the foundation of his subsequent great fame as one of the first of mechanical engineers.

As a consequence of his superior knowledge, so acquired and followed up, he became qualified, at a very early period of his manhood, for positions requiring more than average appreciation of what he was about, combined with the handicraft skill that had grown with it side by side. As a natural consequence, he soon got to London, where he worked as a millwright for two years. Being thrifty with his money as well as with his time and opportunities, he was soon in a sufficiently strong pecuniary position to choose his own course. He wanted to see variety of work, and for this purpose he de-liberately went on tramp from town to town, throughout Ireland as well as England, his smartness and evident intelligence being everywhere the best introduction to good employment, which he got in many varieties, and so derived valuable ideas for the future. Coming at last to Manchester, where the demand for machinery was daily growing, and the opportunities for inventors constantly expanding, he saw his time for something better was come, and he speedily stepped into the position of a master-man.

This was in 1817, and in the same year, being very short of capital, he managed to get into a favourable partnership, the firm becoming rapidly and widely known as "Fairbairn and Lillie," which subsisted prosperously for a considerable number of years, the business eventually falling into Fairbairn's hands alone. Wealth and fame went hand in hand with Fairbairn for many years, his name being as familiar in the Manchester district as that of the Times newspaper in London. His countless inventions and improvements in machinery and mechanical processes have tended to revolutionize ideas in every department of mechanical science, from amongst the cotton thread spinning in Lancashire to the hundreds of iron ships he aided in constructing on the banks of the Thames, all owing points of excellence to the thrift of time adopted by Fairbairn when he was the sturdiest of intellect amongst the earlier companions of his sturdy craft.

MICHAEL FARADAY.

An instance of special opportunity turned to remarkably thrifty account is brought before us in the life of Michael Faraday, who was born in London, in 1794. If the fate of his poor father, a working blacksmith, had been in store for him, who knows in what form or direction the iron would have entered into his soul. As it was, he became the apprentice of a bookseller and bookbinder, and continued in the confidential employment of his first master until he was twenty-two; thus showing that he rendered valuable service while laying the foundation of a strikingly different career. With reference to this matter, it is very important to observe that a hankering after any other trade or occupation than the one originally engaged in is extremely likely to result disastrously. There are, indeed, very few who can emancipate themselves successfully from a course of living once begun. Faraday's is a case that should be approached with the utmost caution.

An unlucky boy was Faraday, that he was put to a trade that he hated from the beginning, though it has to be borne in mind that he hated his father's trade still more. Very likely that was his consolation in his youth,