delusion. One of the members of the committee pressed Stephenson
very hard with questions. "Suppose," he said, "a cow were to get
upon the line, and the engine were to come into collision with it;
wouldn't that be very awkward, now?" George looked up at him with
a merry twinkle of the eye, and answered in his broad North Country
dialect, "Oo, ay, very awkward for the COO."

In spite of all Stephenson's earnestness and mother wit, however,
Parliament refused to pass the bill (in 1825), and for the moment
the engineer's vexation was bitter to behold. He and his friends
plucked up heart, however; they were fighting the winning battle
against prejudice and obstruction, and they were sure to conquer in
the long run. The line was resurveyed by other engineers; the
lands of the hostile owners were avoided; the causes of offence
were dexterously smoothed down; and after another hard fight, in
1826, the bill authorizing the construction of the Liverpool and
Manchester railway was finally passed. The board at once appointed
Stephenson engineer for constructing the line, at a salary of 1000
pounds a year. George might now fairly consider himself entitled
to the honours of an Esquire.

The line was a difficult one to construct; but George Stephenson
set about it with the skill and knowledge acquired during many
years of slow experience; and he performed it with distinguished
success. He was now forty-four; and he had had more to do with the
laying down of rails than any other man then living. The great
difficulty of the Liverpool and Manchester line lay in the fact
that it had to traverse a vast shaking bog or morass, Chat Moss,
which the best engineers had emphatically declared it would be
impossible to cross. George Stephenson, however, had a plan for