On the 27th of September, of this very year in which I write, took place the centenary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington railway, and though it was not the first line to be constructed in England (for the Killingworth railway was built in 1814, and again this was not the first upon which locomotives ran), its claim to priority is nevertheless well founded, for it was the first railway the public noticed, and, in democratic countries, the birth of anything original must date from the moment the most ignorant in the land realize its existence. It flatters ignorance to be always first—such is democratic pride. The 27th of September, 1825, was a very remarkable day in the world’s history, one of those birthdays which have no predictable date, but which depend on the outburst of genius of some great man. The great man was a humble and self-taught engine-wright from Killingworth, one George Stephenson, albeit an honest and persevering man, a worker, a thinker and a dreamer; one of those human thunder clouds which, from time to time, beat up against the conventional currents of thought, and out of which flash the lightnings of unsuspected things—a very remarkable and creative man. On the 27th of September, a hundred years ago, a great concourse of people assembled at Brusselton Incline, some nine miles from Darlington. There, the travelling engine, as it was called, driven by George Stephenson, the greatest genius of his age, moved forward amidst shrill blasts of its whistle, “with its immense train of carriages,” thirty-eight in number; “and such was its velocity,” writes an eye-witness, “that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour!” It took sixty-five minutes to cover the nine miles to Darlington, and the multitude stood aghast! But the other day, I travelled in the “Detroiter” from New York to near by the front door of Mr. Henry Ford—another remarkable and self-taught revolutionary—the distance, if I remember rightly, some seven hundred and fifty miles, and the time taken was fourteen hours. From Brusselton Incline the iron horse hauled away, amidst wild excitement, the stupendous load of ninety tons. At Pittsburg, I have seen locomotives hauling six and seven thousand tons of coal, puffing by all unobserved. Surely Einstein is right, the relative is only true, and ninety tons in 1825 was almost as unbelievable as to-day would be a centaur galloping between the taxis of Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue.