This may have been intended for Americans as well as Mr. Stephenson, for the “promulgation of such nonsense” did not cease, and power and speed increased with the increase in size of the parts of the machinery insured. So rapidly was this increase, that strong attempts were made from time to time to fix a legal limit at some point below twenty miles--in England. In the United States, however, the faster the better, and from five rose to fifty, and then began looking around for rails and road-bed that would withstand the racket. All the expense and experiments were not thrown away; true, investments and results failed for many years to inspire that confidence which opens the money vaults of the capitalists, but, not in the least discouraged, artisans, scientists, and genius, under any and every name, worked on and on, and when asked gave the coalminer’s answer to the House of Commons: “I _can’t_ tell you _how_ I’ll do it, but I _can_ tell you I _will_ do it.” The engineers, machinists, and model-makers kept at work, and so many improvements had been suggested to Peter Cooper’s locomotive that the first thing of the kind that had ever been made in the United States became transformed from a little competitor of the horse into a mammoth institution breathing impatiently for a track on which might be tested its speed and wondrous power. The locomotive came--the heavy iron rails were in sight--but no one had yet suggested a satisfactory road-bed and rests for the rails. It had baffled the attempts of engineers. At this critical juncture a voice was heard from the wilderness--an axman, an Ohio “Squirrel Hunter”--one who had constructed many miles of substantial wagon roads through new sections of marshy country by means of “corduroys”--placing pieces of split timber, or sections of a younger growth, sixteen feet long, in close contact at right angles to the line of intended road-bed, then pinning long pieces of split saplings on the upper surface near the ends of the cross-ties on either side, and filling the interstices with earth, gravel, rotten wood, or other material, making a substantial and elastic track. At a meeting of the president and directors of a section of unsatisfactory strap-iron road, this man appeared before the board with a model showing the relations of road-bed, cross-ties, and rails as now in use, claiming the plans proposed would insure the desirable essentials to safety, speed, cheapness, and durability, by giving elasticity and securing an absolute gauge at high rates of speed. Seeing the model, and hearing the common-sense arguments and practicable philosophy of the “Squirrel Hunter,” all present clapped their hands and cried--“Eureka!”