"So small that it was christened the 'Tom Thumb.' He now had his wooden rails and his pygmy engine but was confronted by still another perplexity. The railroad must pass a very abrupt curve, it was unavoidable that it should do so--a curve so dangerous that everybody who saw it predicted that to round it without the engine jumping the track and derailing the cars behind would be impossible. Poor Peter Cooper faced a very discouraging problem. There was no gainsaying that the curve was a bad one; moreover, his locomotive was not so perfect a product as he might have wished. It had been built under his direction and consisted of the wee engine he had bought in New York connected with an iron boiler about the size of an ordinary tin wash boiler; and as no iron piping was made in America at this time Cooper had taken some old steel musket barrels as a substitute for tubing. With this crude affair he was determined to convince the public that a steam railroad was a workable proposition." "He had a nerve!" "It took nerve to live and accomplish anything in those days," returned Mr. Tolman. "In the first place few persons had fortunes large enough to back big undertakings; and in addition America was still such a young country that it had not begun to produce the materials needed by inventors for furthering any very extensive projects. In fact the world of progress was, as Kipling says, 'very new and all.' Hence human ingenuity had to make what was at hand answer the required purpose, and as a result Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb engine, with its small iron boiler and its gun-barrel tubing, was set upon the wooden track, and an open car (a sort of box on wheels with seats in it) was fastened to it. Into this primitive conveyance the guests invited for the occasion clambered. Ahead lay the forbidding curve. Stephenson, the English engineer, had already stated mathematically the extreme figure at which a curve could be taken and the locomotive still remain on the track, and Peter Cooper was well aware that the curve he must make was a far worse one. However, it would never do for him to betray that he had any misgivings. Therefore, together with his guests, he set out on his eventful trip which was either to demolish them all, or convince the dignitaries of the railroad company that not only was a steam railroad practical but that the Baltimore and Ohio Road was a property valuable enough to be backed by capital." Steve leaned forward, listening eagerly to the story.