VERY HARD CASH.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND"

CHAPTER XII.

AMONGST the curiosities of human reasoning
is this: one forms a judgment on certain
statements; they turn out incorrect, yet the
judgment sound.

This occurs oftenest, when, to divine what any
known person will do in a case stated, we go
boldly by his character, his habits, or his interest:
for these are great forces, towards which men
gravitate through various and even contrary
circumstances.

Now women, sitting at home out of detail's
way, are somewhat forced, as well as naturally
inclined, to rely on their insight into character;
and, by this broad clue, often pass through false
or discoloured data to a sound calculation.

Thus it was Mrs. Dodd applied her native
sagacity to divine why Richard Hardie declined
Julia for his son's wife, and how to make him
withdraw that dissent: and the fair diviner was
much mistaken in detail, but right in her
conclusion; for Richard Hardie was at that moment
the unlikeliest man in Barkington to decline
Julia Dodd—with Hard Cash in five figures—for
his daughter-in-law.

I am now about to make a revelation to the
reader, that will incidentally lead him to Mrs.
Dodd's conclusion, but by a different path.

The outline she gave her daughter and my
reader of Richard Hardie's cold and prudent
youth was substantially correct; but something
had occurred since then, unknown to her,
unknown to all Barkington. The centuries had
blown a respectable bubble. About two hundred
and fifty years ago, some genius, as unknown as
the inventor of the lathe, laid the first wooden
tramroad, to enable a horse to draw forty-two
cwt. instead of seventeen. The coalowners soon
used it largely. In 1738, iron rails were invented;
but prejudice, stronger than that metal, kept
them down, and the wooden ones in vogue, for
some thirty years. Then iron prevailed.

Meantime, a much greater invention had been
creeping on to join the metal way; I mean the
locomotive power of steam; whose history is not
needed here. Enough that in 1804 took place as
promising a wedding as civilisation ever saw;
for then an engine built by Trevethick, a great
genius frittered for want of pluck, drew carriages,
laden with ten tons, five miles an hour on a Welsh
railway. Then stout Stephenson came on the
scene, and insisted on benefiting mankind in
spite of themselves, and of shallow legislators,
à priori reasoners, and a heavy Review, whose
political motto was "Stemus super antiquas
vias;" which may be rendered, "Better stand
still on turnpikes than move on rails."

His torments and triumph are history.

Two of his repartees seem neat: 1. To Lord
Noodle, or Lord Doodle, which was it? objecting
haughtily, "and suppose a cow should get in
the way of your engine, sir?" he replied, "Why,
then it would be bad—for the coow." The
objector found he had overrated the obstructive
power of his honoured parent.

2. To the à priori reasoners, who sat in their
studies and demonstrated with complete unanimity
that uncogged wheels would revolve on a
smooth rail, but leave the carriage in statu quo,
he replied by building an engine with Lord
Ravensworth's noble aid, hooking on eight
carriages, and rattling off up an incline.
"Solvitur ambulando," quoth Stephenson the
stout-hearted to Messrs. À Priori.

Next a coach ran on the Stockton and
Darlington rail. Next the Liverpool and Manchester
line was projected. Oh then what bitter
opposition to the national benefactors, and the good
of man.

Awake from the tomb echoes of dead Cant!

"The revolving wheels might move the engine
on a rail; but what would that avail if they could
not move them in the closet, and on a
mathematical paper. Railways would be bad for
canals, bad for morals, bad for highwaymen, bad
for roadside inns: the smoke would kill the
partridges ('Aha! thou hast touched us nearly,' said
the country gentlemen), the travellers would go
slowly to their destination, but swift to destruction."

And the Heavy Review, whose motto was
"Stemus super turnpikes," offered "to back old
Father Thames against the Woolwich railway
for any sum." And Black Will, who drove the
next heaviest ephemeral in the island, told a
schoolboy, who now writes these pages, "there's
nothing can ever be safe at twenty miles an hour,