Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/358

 . 21, 1861.] No soil of sorrow, no taint of sin, From thy sojourn here on thy robes shall rest, The smiles that usher’d thy young life in Shall follow thee home to yon region blest.

On thy forehead no cloud shall a shadow fling, Nor the darkness there of the grave forecast; Of so unspotted and pure a thing The loveliest morning is still its last.”

And, slowly unfolding his wings snow-white, The angel ceased, and aloft he fled To the blest abodes of eternal light. Alas! poor mother! Thy boy is dead!

years back, a man of a studious habit of mind looked in at the door of a veterinary establishment where a horse was undergoing a curious process called “firing,” that is, the application of heat along the course of the tendons leading to the feet. Desirous of learning what it was for, he applied to a bullet-headed man in a sleeved waistcoat, who had just made a speech indicative of considerable humanity to horses, by way of reproof to a subordinate, “Is that the way to treat an oss, ye hass you?”

Thus delivered of his indignation, he turned to his questioner. “Ye see, sir, as how an oss in his natteral state can gallop over the turf for ever and ever, and never hurt hisself, and doesn’t want no shoes neither. But ven the poor hannimal is put on to these here Lon’on roads, and, wus still, these here pavements, it stands to reason that if he hadn’t no shoes he’d soon wear off his hoofs; and then with a load of iron, at a sharp trot, don’t his poor feet come down like sledge-hammers, neither? If it wasn’t for his natteral springs in his legs and feet, Lor’ bless ye he’d be clean done up in a month. But, anyhow, his springs gets vored out and dummied like, ven he’s been two or three years on the stones, and he hasn’t no more feelin’ in his feet than that fellow I’ve been a blowin’ up, has in his head. So ven an oss gets so, he’s groggy like, and doesn’t know how to put one foot properly before the other, and he’d pretty soon be goin’ down to prayers. So then they sets to, to fire his legs, and that brings back his feelin’ like, and he’s more safe again.”

“In short, they re-harden and temper his leg-springs?”

“Eggzackerly, sir! But not to say as how they are ever so good as new, ven he’d only turf to gallop over, and not granite.”

Time passed, and our student one day rested at a level crossing by the side of a railway, while train after train passed at high speed.

“Whence arises this thunderous sound, and whence this semi-earthquake?” were the reflections of our student.

Alternate contact and non-contact between the wheels and the rails, multiplied in effect by the speed, and resulting in heavy blows. There was no other solution. The wheels did not roll—they jumped. Rolling would be a continuous pressure only: jumping caused percussion; percussion caused noise.

“What caused the jumping?” was his next thought. Impediments by irregularity of the rails, and sledging movement instead of rolling movement of the wheels.

What, then, was the remedy? First to make the rails smooth and even, and bed them continuously in non-deflecting timber, and then to make the wheels like a horse’s foot: to apply elastic resilience as near as possible to the rail.

And so the student became an inventor. Friends advised him not to pursue so unremunerative a path, but it was a “labour of love,” and so he persevered. “Eureka!” he exclaimed one day, after calculations and experiments without end, which resulted in a system of rail thoroughly new, and which was universally scoffed at. “Eureka!” he exclaimed a second time, when he produced a wheel to match the rail, and which he called a “horse-foot wheel.”

The mechanism was achieved and material difficulty surmounted, but the engineering of men’s minds was a far less easy matter. The inventor could not get listened to. He could not, like the Ancient Mariner, find

So he tried an assemblage of many men, and wrote a paper which was read or sung before the British Association, which then held their sederunt in Glasgow; and then it was laid on the table, or under the table, and men knew it no more.

Still the inventor had faith in himself, and worked on. He became a peripatetic besieger of men about railways, who, like the Roman Centurion, had power to say “Go, and he goeth;” but none of them said to the inventor, “Come!”

But one day he fell in with a man in railway authority with whom he had formerly had a long dispute. He showed him drawings of both wheel and rail. After examination of both, the authority said, “I like the wheel; but the rail will not do at all: it will break down in a week.”

“I am certain to the contrary,” said the inventor.

“Well, then, I will try both! and more, I will try anything you say will do, simply because you say it, if not involving much expense.”

Some time elapsed before the work could be put in hand. The rail excited mirth amongst the officials. A fortnight was the utmost that prediction would allow for its durability; but days, weeks, and months passed, and it became a marvel to all concerned. For three years the small sample was under trial, and then the engineer of a neighbouring line was induced to try it also. A third engineer laid down two miles; and a fourth promised.

For six years it has now been under trial; it is demonstrably stronger than an equal quantity of materials otherwise disposed. The rail is safer, and free from damage: it is not exposed to the same amount of mischievous vibration, and it is not compounded of loose jolting parts. Moreover, it is actually 25 per cent. lower in cost and in maintenance. Public authorities approve it; but the humour of the thing is, that they who should use it profess to be afraid to use