His leisure moments thus carefully improved, it will be inferred that Stephenson continued a sober man. Though his notions were never extreme on this point, he was systematically temperate. It appears that on the invitation of his master, Ralph Dodds--and an invitation from a master to a workman is not easy to resist--he had, on one or two occasions, been induced to join him in a forenoon glass of ale in the public house of the village. But one day, about noon, when Mr. Dodds had got him as far as the public-house door, on his invitation to "come in and take a glass o' yel," Stephenson made a dead stop, and said, firmly, "No, sir, you must excuse me; I have made a resolution to drink no more at this time of day." And he went back. He desired to retain the character of a steady workman; and the instances of men about him who had made shipwreck of their character through intemperance were then, as now, unhappily too frequent. But another consideration besides his own self-improvement had already begun to exercise an important influence upon his life. This was the training and education of his son Robert, now growing up an active, intelligent boy, as full of fun and tricks as his father had been. When a little fellow, scarce big enough to reach so high as to put a clock-head on when placed upon the table, his father would make him mount a chair for the purpose; and to "help father" was the proudest work which the boy then, and ever after, could take part in. When the little engine was set up at the Ochre Quarry to pump it dry, Robert was scarcely absent for an hour. He watched the machine very eagerly when it was set to work, and he was very much annoyed at the fire burning away the grates. The man who fired the engine was a sort of wag, and thinking to get a laugh at the boy, he said, "Those bars are getting varra bad, Robert; I think we maun cut up some of that hard wood, and put it in instead." "What would be the use of that, you fool?" said the boy, quickly. "You would no sooner have put them in than they would be burnt out again!" [Illustration: RUTTER'S SCHOOL-HOUSE, LONG BENTON. [By R. P. Leitch.]] So soon as Robert was of a proper age, his father sent him over to the road-side school at Long Benton, kept by Rutter, the parish clerk. But the education which he gave was of a very limited kind, scarcely extending beyond the primer and pothooks. While working as a brakesman on the pit-head at Killingworth, the father had often bethought him of the obstructions he had himself encountered in life through his want of schooling, and he formed the determination that no labor, nor pains, nor self-denial on his part should be spared to furnish his son with the best education that it was in his power to bestow.