large part of his money tied up in a worthless,
partially constructed railroad."

"What a rotten trick!" cried Steve.

"Yes; and yet perhaps Cooper deserved a little chastisement," 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 pass 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 substitute 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, ha