"What a rotten trick!" cried Steve.

"Yes; and yet perhaps Cooper deserved a little chastis.e.m.e.nt," smiled Mr.

Tolman. "Instead of making money out of other people as he had intended--"

"He got stung himself!" burst out the boy.

"Practically so, yes," was the reply. "Well, at any rate, there he was and if he was ever to get back any of his fortune he must demonstrate that he had profound faith in the partly constructed railroad.

Accordingly he bought a small engine weighing about a ton--"

"One ton!"

"So small that it was christened the 'Tom Thumb.' He now had his wooden rails and his pygmy engine but was confronted by still another perplexity. The railroad must pa.s.s a very abrupt curve, it was unavoidable that it should do so--a curve so dangerous that everybody who saw it predicted that to round it without the engine jumping the track and derailing the cars behind would be impossible. Poor Peter Cooper faced a very discouraging problem. There was no gainsaying that the curve was a bad one; moreover, his locomotive was not so perfect a product as he might have wished. It had been built under his direction and consisted of the wee engine he had bought in New York connected with an iron boiler about the size of an ordinary tin wash boiler; and as no iron piping was made in America at this time Cooper had taken some old steel musket barrels as a subst.i.tute for tubing. With this crude affair he was determined to convince the public that a steam railroad was a workable proposition."

"He had a nerve!"

"It took nerve to live and accomplish anything in those days," returned Mr. Tolman. "In the first place few persons had fortunes large enough to back big undertakings; and in addition America was still such a young country that it had not begun to produce the materials needed by inventors for furthering any very extensive projects. In fact the world of progress was, as Kipling says, 'very new and all.' Hence human ingenuity had to make what was at hand answer the required purpose, and as a result Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb engine, with its small iron boiler and its gun-barrel tubing, was set upon the wooden track, and an open car (a sort of box on wheels with seats in it) was fastened to it. Into this primitive conveyance the guests invited for the occasion clambered.

Ahead lay the forbidding curve. Stephenson, the English engineer, had already stated mathematically the extreme figure at which a curve could be taken and the locomotive still remain on the track, and Peter Cooper was well aware that the curve he must make was a far worse one. However, it would never do for him to betray that he had any misgivings.

Therefore, together with his guests, he set out on his eventful trip which was either to demolish them all, or convince the dignitaries of the railroad company that not only was a steam railroad practical but that the Baltimore and Ohio Road was a property valuable enough to be backed by capital."

Steve leaned forward, listening eagerly to the story.

"Slowly the little engine started, and nearer and nearer came the terrible curve. The train was now running at fifteen miles an hour, a speed almost unbelievable to the simple souls of that time. Round the curve it went in safety, increasing its velocity to eighteen miles an hour. The railroad officials who were Cooper's guests were frantic with enthusiasm. One man produced paper and pencil and begged those present to write their names, just to prove that it was possible to write even when flying along at such a meteoric rate of speed. Another man jotted down a few sentences to demonstrate that to think and write connected phrases were things that could be done, in spite of the fact that one was dashing through s.p.a.ce with this unearthly rapidity."

"So the railroad men were converted, were they?"

"They were more than converted; they were exultant," said his father.

"Of course it was some time after this before the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became a reality. Capital had to be raised and the project stably launched."

"Oh, then this was not the first railroad in the country, after all,"

observed the boy in a disappointed tone.

"No. South Carolina boasts the first regular pa.s.senger locomotive propelled by steam," returned Mr. Tolman. "This road ran from Charleston to Hamburg and although a charter was obtained for it in 1827 it took all the first year to lay six miles of track. In fact it was not until 1830 that the railroad began to be operated to any extent. When it was, a locomotive, every part of which had been produced in this country, was employed to draw the trains. This was the first steam locomotive of American make in history. It was dubbed 'The Best Friend' and, like the engines that had preceded it, had a series of interesting adventures.

Since it was the only locomotive in the possession of the road and was in use all day any repairs on the hard-worked object had to be made at night."

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stephen.

"Nevertheless 'The Best Friend' might have gone on its way prosperously had it not been for the ignorance of those who ran it. The engineer, to be sure, understood more or less about a steam locomotive although he was none too wise; but the fireman, unfortunately, understood next to nothing, and one day, on being left alone in the cab and seeing the steam escaping from the safety valve, he conceived the notion that a leak was causing unnecessary waste. Therefore he securely screwed up the s.p.a.ce through which the steam had been issuing, and to make prevention more certain he himself, a large and heavy man, sat down on the escape valve."

"And presto!" exclaimed Steve, rubbing his hands.

"Exactly so! Presto, indeed! Figuratively speaking, he blew sky-high and 'The Best Friend' with him," replied Mr. Tolman. "It was an unfortunate happening, too, for people were still ill-informed about the uses of steam and very nervous about its mysterious power and this accident only served to make them more so. For some time afterward many persons refused to patronize the railroad in spite of all the authorities could do to soothe them. In time, however, the public calmed down, although in order to rea.s.sure them it was found necessary to put a car heaped with bales of cotton between them and the engine, not only to conceal the monster from their view but also to convince them that it was some distance away. Whether they also had a vague notion that in case they went skyward the cotton might soften their fall when they came down, I do not know."

"Railroading certainly had its troubles, didn't it?" Steve commented with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"It certainly had, especially in our own country," was the reply. "In England Stephenson and other experimenters like him had materials at hand which to some extent served their purpose; moreover, thanks to Watt and other inventors, there were definite scientific ideas to work from.

But in America the successful railroad which might serve as a model was unknown. Therefore for some time English engines continued to be shipped across the sea, and even then it was a long time before our American engineers understood much about their mechanism. Only by means of repeated experiments, first in one part of the country and then in another, did our American railroads, so marvelous in their construction, come into being."

Mr. Tolman paused a moment, yawned, and then rose and beckoned to the porter.

"We still have much to perfect in our modern railroad, however," he said with a touch of humor. "The sleeping car, for example, is an abomination, as you are speedily to have proved to you. Here, porter!

We'd like these berths made up. I guess we'd better turn in now, son.

You have had enough railroading for one day and are tired. You must get a rest and be in the pink of condition to-morrow for, remember, you are going to wake up in New York."

"If it will make to-morrow come any quicker I am quite ready to go to bed," retorted Stephen, with a sleepy smile.

CHAPTER VII

A HOLIDAY JOURNEY

The next morning, when Steve woke to the swaying of the train and a drowsy sense of confusion and smoke, he could not for an instant think where he was; but it did not take long for him to open his eyes, recollect the happenings of the previous day, smile with satisfaction, and hurriedly wriggle into his clothes.

Already he could hear his father stirring in the berth below and presently the elder man called:

"We shall be in New York in half-an-hour, son, so get your traps packed up. How did you sleep?"

"Sound as a top!"

"That is fine! I was afraid you might not rest very well. As I observed last night, a sleeping car is not all that it might be. The day will come when it will have to be improved. However, since it gets us to New York safely and economizes hours of day travel, it is a blessing for which we should be grateful."

As he spoke he moved into the aisle and helped the boy down from his perch; they then sought out a distant seat where they dropped down and watched the rapidly pa.s.sing landscape.

"I have been thinking, as I was dressing, of the story you told me last night about our American railroads," said the lad. "It surprised me a good deal to hear that the South took the lead over the North in the introduction of the steam locomotive."

Mr. Tolman smiled into the eager face.

"While it is true that South Carolina took the initiative in railroading for a short time the South did not remain long in the ascendency," he answered, "for the third steam locomotive put into actual pa.s.senger service was built at Albany. This city, because of its geographical position, was a great stagecoach center, having lines that radiated from it into the interior in almost every direction. And not only was it an important coaching rendezvous but as it was also a leading commercial tributary of New York the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad had built a short track between Albany and Schenectady and supplied it with cars propelled by horse power. Now in 1831 the company decided to transform this road into a steam railroad and to this end ordered a steam locomotive called the 'DeWitt Clinton' to be constructed at West Point with the aim of demonstrating to the northern States the advantages of steam transportation. You can imagine the excitement this announcement caused.

Think, if you had never seen a steam engine, how eager you would be to behold the wonder. These olden time New Yorkers felt precisely the same way. Although the route was only sixteen miles long the innovation was such a novel and tremendous one that all along the way crowds of spectators a.s.sembled to watch the pa.s.sing of the magic train. At the starting point near the Hudson there was a dense throng of curious onlookers who gathered to see for the first time in all their lives the steam locomotive and its brigade of coaches,--for in those days people never spoke of a train of cars; a group of railroad carriages was always known as a brigade, and the term _coach_ was, and in many cases still is applied to the cars. This train that created so much interest was practically like Stephenson's English trains, being made up of a small locomotive, a tender, and two carriages constructed by fastening stagecoach bodies on top of railroad trucks. Stout iron chains held these vehicles together--a primitive, and as it subsequently proved, a very impractical method of coupling."

"It must have been a funny enough train!" Steve exclaimed.

"I doubt if it appeared so to the people of that time," his father returned, "for since the audience of that period had nothing with which to compare it, it probably seemed quite the ordinary thing. Was it not like the railroad trains used in England? How was America to know anything different? Yes, I am sure the 'DeWitt Clinton' was considered a very grand affair indeed, even though it was only a small engine without a cab, and had barely enough platform for the engineer to stand upon while he drove the engine and fed the pitch-pine logs into the furnace."

"How many people did the train hold?" inquired Steve, with growing curiosity.

"Each coach carried six persons inside and two outside," was Mr.

Tolman's reply, "and on this first eventful trip not quite enough adventurous souls could be found to fill the seats. Perhaps could the unwary pa.s.sengers who did go have foreseen the discomforts ahead of them there would have been fewer yet. But often ignorance is bliss. It certainly was so in this case for in high feather the fortunate ones took their places, the envied of many a beholder."

"What happened?" asked the boy eagerly. "Was the trip a success?"

"That depends on what you mean by success," laughed his father. "If you are asking whether the pa.s.sengers arrived safely at Schenectady I can a.s.sure you that they did; but if you wish to know whether the journey was a comfortable one, and likely to convert the stranger to steam travel, that is quite another matter. The description of the excursion which history has handed down to us is very nave. In the first place the pitch-pine fuel sent a smudge of smoke and cinders back over all the pa.s.sengers and if it did not entirely choke them it at least encrusted them thickly with dirt, particularly the ones who sat outside. The umbrellas they opened to protect themselves were soon demolished, their coverings being blown away or burned up by the sparks. In fact, it was only by continual alertness that the clothing of the venturesome travelers was not ignited. In the meantime those inside the coaches fared little better, for as the coaches were without springs and the track was none too skilfully laid, the jolting of the cars all but sent the heads of the pa.s.sengers through the roof of the coaches. Added to this the train proceeded in a series of jerks that wrenched the chains and banged one coach into another with such violence that those outside were in danger of being hurled down upon the track, and those inside were tossed hither and thither from seat to seat. You will easily comprehend that the outing was not one of unalloyed pleasure."

The boy laughed heartily.

"Of course," went on Mr. Tolman, "there was no help for anybody until the first stopping place was reached; but when the engine slowed down and the grimy, almost unrecognizable pilgrims had a chance to catch their breath, something had to be done by way of a remedy. The remedy fortunately was near at hand and consisted of nothing very difficult.

Some of the more enterprising of the company leaped out and tore the rails from a near-by fence and after stretching the coupling chains taut, they bound them to the wooden boards. In this way the coaches were kept apart and the silk hats of the dignitaries who had been invited to partic.i.p.ate in the opening of the road rescued from total annihilation."