The brave young man resolved therefore
to learn his letters and make pot-hooks
at a night-school among a few colliers' sons,
who paid threepence a-week each to a poor
teacher at Welbottle. At the age of nineteen,
he could write his name. A night-
school was set up by a Scotchman within a
few minutes' walk of Jolly's Close; and to
this, George Stephenson removed himself.
The Scotchman had much credit for his
mastery of arithmetic. He knew as far as
reduction. George fastened upon arithmetic
with an especial zeal, and was more apt than
any other pupil for the study. In no very
long time he had worked out all that could
be yielded to him by the dominie. While
thus engaged, the young man was getting
lessons from his friend Coe in brakeing; and,
with Coe's help, persisting in them against
dogged opposition from some of the old hands.
At the age of twenty, being perfectly steady
and trustworthy as a workman, he obtained
the place of brakesman at the Dolly Pit,
Black Callerton; with wages varying from
seventeen and sixpence to a pound a-week.
But, wheat then cost nearly six pounds the
quarter.

George was ambitious to save a guinea or
two, because he was in love with something
better able to return his good-will than a
steam-engine. In leisure hours he turned
his mechanical dexterity to the business of
mending the shoes of his fellow-workmen,
and advanced from mending to the
making both of shoes and lasts. This
addition to his daily twelve hours' labour at the
colliery, made some little addition to his
weekly earnings. It enabled him to save his
first guinea, and encouraged him to think the
more of marrying Fanny Henderson, a pretty
servant in a neighbouring farm-house; sweet-
tempered, sensible, and good. He once had
shoes of hers to mend, and, as he carried
them to her one Sunday evening with a
friend he could not help pulling them out of
his pocket every now and then to admire them
because they were hers, and to bid his
companion observe what a capital job he had
made of them.

George Stephenson still enjoyed exercise
in feats of agility and strength; still spent a
part of each idle afternoon on the pay
Saturday in taking his engine to pieces;
cleaning it and pondering over the uses and
values of its parts. He was a model workman
in the eyes of his employers; never
missing a day's wages through idleness or
indiscretion; spending none of his evenings
in public-houses, avoiding the dog-fights
and cock-fights, and man-fights in which
pitmen delighted. Once, indeed, being
insulted by Ned Nelson, the bully of the pit,
young Stephenson disdained to quail before
him, though he was a great fighter, and a
man with whom it was considered dangerous
to quarrel. Nelson challenged him to
a pitched battle, and the challenge was
accepted. Everybody said Stephenson would
be killed. The young men and boys came
round him with awe, to ask whether it was
true that he was "goin' to feight Nelson."
"Aye," he said, " never fear for me, I'll feight
him." Nelson went off work to go into
training. Stephenson worked on as usual;
went from a day's labour to the field of
battle and on the appointed evening, and,
with his strong muscle and hard bone put
down the bully, as he never for a moment
doubted that he would.

As a brakesman, George Stephenson
had been removed to Willington Ballast
Quay, when, at the age of twenty-one he
signed his name in the register of Newburn
Church as the husband of Fanny Henderson;
and, seating her behind him on a pillion
upon a stout farm-horse borrowed from her
sister's master, with the sister as bridesmaid
and a friend as bridesman, he went first to
his father and mother—who were growing
old, and struggling against poverty in Jolly's
Close—and, having paid his duty as a son to
them, jolted across country, and through the
streets of Newcastle, upon a ride homeward
of fifteen miles. An upper room in a small
cottage at Wellington Quay was the home to
which George took his bride. Thirteen
months afterwards, his only son, Robert, was
born there. The exercise of his mechanical
skill, prompted sometimes by bold speculations
of his own, amused the young husband—
and the wife doubtless—of an evening.
He was at work on the problem of Perpetual
Motion. He had acquired reputation as a
shoemaker. Accident gave rise to a yet
more profitable exercise of ingenuity. Alarm
of a chimney on fire caused his room to be
one day flooded with soot and water by good-
natured friends. His most valuable piece of
furniture, the clock, was seriously injured.
He could not afford to send it to a clockmaker,
and resolved to try his own hand
on the works; took them to pieces, studied
them, and so put them together as to cure
his clock in a way marvellous to all the
village. He was soon asked to cure a neighbour's
clock, and gradually made his title
good to great fame as a clock-curer throughout
the district.

After having lived three years as brakesman
at Willington Quay, George Stephenson
removed to Killingworth, where he was made
brakesman at the West Moor Colliery. From
the high ground of Killingworth, the spires of
Newcastle, seven miles distant, are visible—
weather and smoke permitting. At Killingworth,
when they had been but two or three
years married, George Stephenson's wife,
Fanny, died. Soon after her death, leaving
his little boy in charge of a neighbour, he
marched on foot into Scotland; for, he had
been invited by the owners of a colliery near
Montrose to superintend the working of one
of Bolton and Watt's engines. For this work
he received rather high wages; and, after a