a small locomotive. Long enough had he been sneered at and called
maniac. He put the locomotive on the track with cars behind it, and ran
it with himself as a passenger, to the amazement of those before whom
the demonstration was made. So far as is known that was the first
locomotive to be built or run on a track in America. But even with
Stevens's successful example, years passed before steam travel assumed a
practical form.

When the pioneer of Fifth Avenue wished to voyage far afield it was
toward the stage-coach as a means of transportation that his mind
turned, for the stage-coach was the only way by which a large portion of
the population could accomplish overland journeys. To go to Boston, for
example, the traveller from New York usually left by a steamboat that
took him to Providence in about twenty-three hours, and travelled the
remaining forty miles by coach. Five hours was needed for the overland
journey, and was considered amazing speed. By the year 1832 the overland
trip between New York and Boston had been reduced to forty-one hours.
But the passengers were not allowed to break the journey at a tavern,
even for four or five hours of sleep, as they had formerly done, but
were carried forward night and day without intermission. A fare of
eleven dollars was usually exacted for the trip.

Even to go to one of the towns of Connecticut, the shore towns of the
Boston Post Road, was an undertaking that called for serious preliminary
study. A New York paper, now before the writer, carries in its first
column an advertisement of a new steamer, the "Fairfield," plying
between New York and Norwalk. But in order to make use of its services,
the traveller had to be at the pier at the foot of Market Street at six
o'clock in the morning. Upon the arrival at Norwalk stages were at hand
for the convenience of such of the passengers who wished to travel on