t he
was gifted with powers of body and mind above the average, these were his
only advantages. The rest was due to hard work, patient, persistent
effort. He had neither wealth, schooling, patrons, nor favouring
circumstances. He comes into the arena like a naked athlete to wrestle
in his own strength with the difficulties before him. And these were
many and great!

"I need not dwell upon the details of a life which is so well known to
most, and to some present so vividly, from personal intercourse and
friendship. We all know what a battle he fought, how nobly and well,
first striving by patient plodding effort to remove his own ignorance,
cheerfully bending himself to every kind of work that came in his way,
and seeking to gain not only manual expertness, but a mastery of
principles. We know how he went on toiling, observing, experimenting,
saying little--for he was never given to the 'talk of the lips'--but
doing much, letting slip no chance of getting knowledge, and of turning
it to practical account. He was one of those, who

While his companions slept
Was toiling upwards in the night.

And in due time his quiet work bore fruit. He invented a safety-lamp
which alone should have entitled him to the gratitude of posterity. He
then set himself to improve the locomotive, and fit it for the future
which his prescient mind discerned, and on a fair field he vanquished all
competitors. He then sought to adapt the roadway to the engine and make
it fit for its new work. And then, hardest task of all, he had to
convince the public that railway travelling was a possible thing; that it
could he made safe, cheap, and rapid. In doing this he was compelled to
design, plan, and execute almost everything with his own mind and hand.
All classes and interests were against him, the engineers, the land
owners, the legislature, and the public. He had to encounter the
phantoms of ignorance and fear, the solid resistance of vested interests,
and the bottomless quagmires of Chat Moss. But he triumphed! And it was
a well-earned reward as he looked down from his pleasant retreat at
Tapton upon the iron bands which glistened below, to know that they were
part of a network which was spreading over the whole land and becoming
the one highway of transit and commerce. Nor was this all his
satisfaction. He knew that Europe and America were welcoming the
railway, and that it was promising to link together the whole civiliz