another practical matter even nearer home than the locomotive on
which to exercise his inventive genius. One day, in 1814, the main
gallery of the colliery caught fire. Stephenson at once descended
into the burning pit, with a chosen band of volunteers, who
displayed the usual heroic courage of colliers in going to the
rescue of their comrades; and, at the risk of their lives, these
brave men bricked up the burning portion, and so, by excluding the
air, put out the dangerous fire. Still, even so, several of the
workmen had been suffocated, and one of the pitmen asked Geordie in
dismay whether nothing could be done to prevent such terrible
disasters in future. "The price of coal-mining now," he said, "is
pitmen's lives." Stephenson promised to think the matter over; and
he did think it over with good effect. The result of his thought
was the apparatus still affectionately known to the pitmen as "the
Geordie lamp." It is a lamp so constructed that the flame cannot
pass out into the air outside, and so cause explosions in the
dangerous fire-damp which is always liable to occur abundantly in
the galleries of coal mines. By this invention alone George
Stephenson's name and memory might have been kept green for ever;
for his lamp has been the means of saving thousands of lives from a
sudden, a terrible, and a pitiful death. Most accidents that now
occur in mines are due to the neglect of ordinary precautions, and
to the perverse habit of carrying a naked lighted candle in the
hand (contrary to regulations) instead of a carefully guarded
safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's
lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the
most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and,
therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present
day, though far less frequently than before the invention of the
Geordie lamp.