He Wanted to Learn

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 4, 1913

He Wanted to Learn

MORE than one hundred years ago a stout, freckle-faced, awkward boy of eighteen years, dressed in a ragged waistcoat and short breeches, without stockings or shoes, rapped one evening at the door of a humble cottage in northern England, and asked to see the village schoolmaster. When that person appeared, the boy said modestly, “I should like to attend your evening school.”

“And what do you wish to study?” asked the teacher, roughly.

“I want to learn to read and write, sir,” answered the lad.

The schoolmaster glanced at the boy’s homely face and rough clothes scornfully, and said: “Very well, you may attend, but an awkward, bare-legged laddie like you would be better doing something else than learning his letters.” Then he closed the door in the lad’s face.

This boy was the son of the fireman of a pumping-engine in a Northumberland coal-mine, and was born one hundred and thirty-two years ago—on June 9, 1781, to be exact. His birthplace was a hovel, with a clay floor, mud walls, and bare rafters. When he was five years old, he began to work for his living by herding cows in the daytime and barring up the gates at night. As he grew older, he was set to picking stones from the coal, and after that to driving a horse which drew coal from the pit. He went half-fed and half-clothed.

When he called at the schoolhouse, he was plugman of a pumping-engine, and, though he knew nothing of reading or writing, he had studied the engine until he had a complete knowledge of the machine. He was able to take it apart and make any ordinary repairs.

Not discouraged by the advice given him by the schoolmaster, he attended the evening school. At the end of about two years he had learned all this school could teach him. He conceived the plan of constructing a steam-engine. It took him a long time, but at the age of forty he had made several engines, and was known as a successful and energetic engineer, and was called upon to build long and difficult lines of railroad.

But his locomotives were too slow; he wanted them to run faster. He proposed to build one that would run at the rate of twelve miles an hour! Everybody laughed; some thought he was crazy. One gentleman, who considered himself very wise, said to him: “Suppose you invent an engine capable of running nine or ten miles an hour, and suppose, while it is running, a cow should stray upon the track. Will not that be a very awkward circumstance?”

“I should think it might be very awkward—for the cow,” he answered.

Well, he succeeded in making his locomotive, and at a trial which took place near Liverpool it attained the unprecedented speed of fourteen miles an hour! By making certain improvements, this same engine, the “Rocket,” was made to go at the speed of thirty miles an hour. People laughed no longer.

He was invited as a consulting engineer to foreign countries, and wealth flowed upon him. Philosophers sought his friendship, and his king offered him knighthood, but he preferred to remain plain George Stephenson. That is the name of this “awkward laddie,” who became the inventor of the locomotive.

—The Myrtle.