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Page 46
_Rudyard Kipling_.
SELECTION XXI
HUMAN PROGRESS
All is action, all is motion,
In this mighty world of ours;
Like the current of the ocean,
Man is urged by unseen powers.
Steadily, but strongly moving,
Life is onward evermore;
Still the present is improving
On the age that went before.
Duty points with outstretched fingers,
Every soul to action high;
Woe betide the soul that lingers--
Onward! onward! is the cry.
Though man's form may seem victorious,
War may waste and famine blight,
Still from out the conflict glorious,
Mind comes forth with added light.
O'er the darkest night of sorrow,
From the deadliest field of strife,
Dawns a clearer, brighter morrow,
Springs a truer, nobler life.
Onward! onward! onward, ever!
Human progress none may stay;
All who make the vain endeavor
Shall, like chaff, be swept away.
_J. Hagan_.
LESSON LXIV
GEORGE STEPHENSON, THE ENGINEER
A famous engineer, named Stephenson, was the first person to
demonstrate the fact that an engine could be built which would draw a
train of cars on a railway. He was an Englishman. His parents were
poor, and the whole family had to live in one room. George was one of
six children; none of them were sent to school, because they had to
work for their living.
From an early age George had assisted his father in tending the fires
of the steam engine which worked the machinery of a large coal mine.
He devoted himself to the study of this engine until he had mastered
every detail of its construction. In 1813, a rich nobleman entrusted
him with money to carry out his favorite plan of building a "traveling
engine," as he then called it.
He made an engine that was fairly successful, as it drew eight loaded
cars on a railway at a speed of four miles an hour. But he was not
contented; he knew that he could do much better. Soon afterward, he
was employed to construct another engine, in which he made some great
improvements that enabled it to go twice as fast as the other.
Accounts of Stephenson's great invention crept into print, and people
began to have faith in the locomotive. In 1822, a company began to
build a line of railway between two towns named Stockton and
Darlington. Stephenson was employed to construct the road-bed and
build the engines. It was completed three years later, and was the
subject of great popular curiosity.
Great crowds came to see the line opened. Stephenson himself drove the
first engine. The train consisted of thirty-four cars. The signal was
given and the train started. Great was the sensation as it moved off,
and still greater was the admiration of the people at Stockton when the
train arrived there after a safe journey. Thus, in 1825, was opened
the first railway ever made for public use.
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