“His first attempt he thought was going to be a failure; scarcely anybody went by car. People were used to trudging along on foot, and they continued to do, thus saving their money, which was more valuable than their time. Another man would have abandoned the speculation; but Mr. Bianconi did nothing of the kind. He started an opposition car, at a cheaper rate, which was not known to be his—not even by the rival drivers, who raced against each other for the foremost place. The excitement of the contest, the cheapness of the fare, the occasional free lifts given to passengers, soon began to attract a paying public, and before very long both the cars every day came in full. He had bought a great, strong, yellow horse, as he called him, to run in the opposition car; he gave, he said, £20 for the animal. One evening his own recognised driver came to him in great pride and excitement. ‘You know the great, big, yallah horse under the opposition car? Well, sir, he’ll never run another yard. I broke his heart this night. I raced him from beyant Moore-o’-Barns, and he’ll never thravel agin.’ Mr. Bianconi told me he was obliged to show the greatest gratification at the loss of his beast; but it gave him enough of the opposition car, which there and then came to an end, like the poor horse. The habit of travelling on a car increased among a people when they had become alive to its advantage.” The main principle on which Bianconi acted was never to despise poor people, or apparently small interests. “His great enterprise,” wrote Dr. Cook Taylor, “arose from the problems, how to make a two-wheeled car pay while running for the accommodation of poor districts and poor people, as regularly as the mail-coaches did for the rich; and when that was solved, how to regulate a system of traffic by a network of cars, the cars increasing in size as the traffic required, from the short one-horse car, holding six people, to the long four-horse car, holding twenty people.” One extract more will give the reader Mr. Bianconi’s secret of money-making:— “I remember when I was earning a shilling a day in Clonmel, I used to live upon eightpence, and that did not prevent the people from making me their mayor. I did the same at Cashel and at Thurles, and that does not prevent me from at present living between the towns, on a property of seven miles circumference, and on which I pay her Majesty £7 2_s._ 6_d._ per year, or from being a J.P. or a D.L. “It gives me sincere pleasure in seeing you follow the sound principle of having your wants within your means. Don’t be fond of changes. It is better for you to be at the head of a small republic than at the foot of a great one.” Mrs. O’Connell writes:—