In 1833, people who were coming from the West to attend President Jackson's second inauguration travelled part of the way by railroad. They came over the National Road as far as Frederick, Maryland, and there left it to enter a train of six cars, each accommodating sixteen persons. The train was drawn by horses. In this manner they continued their journey to Baltimore. In the autumn of that year a railroad was opened between New York and Philadelphia. At first horses were used to draw the train, but by the end of the year locomotives, which ran at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, were introduced. This was a tremendous stride in the progress of railroad traffic. [Illustration: Comparison of "DeWitt Clinton" Locomotive and Train, the First Train Operated in New York, with a Modern Locomotive of the New York Central R.R.] To be sure, the locomotives were small, but two or more started off together, each drawing its own little train of cars. Behind the locomotive was a car which was a mere platform with a row of benches, seating perhaps forty passengers, inside of an open railing. Then followed four or five cars looking very much like stage-coaches, each having three compartments, with doors on each side. The last car was a high, open-railed van, in which the baggage of the whole train was heaped up and covered with oilcloth. How strange a train of this sort would look beside one of our modern express-trains, with its huge engine, and its sleeping, dining, and parlor cars! You will be surprised that any objection was raised to the railroad. Its earliest use had been in England, and when there was talk of introducing it in this country some people said: "If those who now travel by stage take the railroad coaches, then stage-drivers will be thrown out of work!" Little could they foresee what a huge army of men would find work on the modern railroad. In spite of all obstacles and objections, the railroads, once begun, grew rapidly in favor. In 1833 there were scarcely three hundred and eighty miles of railroad in the United States; now there are more than two hundred and forty thousand miles. MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH The next stride which Progress made seemed even more wonderful. Having contrived an easier and a quicker way to move men and their belongings from one place to another, what should she do but whisper in the ear of a thinking man: "You can make thought travel many times faster." The man whose inventive genius made it possible for men to flash their thoughts thousands of miles in a few seconds of time was Samuel Finley Breese Morse. He was born in 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. His father was a learned minister, who "was always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting"; and his mother was a woman of noble character, who inspired her son with lofty purpose.