the history of those two able and useful lives is almost inseparable.
During the whole of George Stephenson's long upward struggle, and during
the hard battle he had afterwards to fight on behalf of his grand design
of railways, he met with truer sympathy, appreciation, and comfort from
his brave and gifted son than from any other person whatsoever.
Unhappily, his pleasure and delight in the up-bringing of his boy was
soon to be clouded for a while by the one great bereavement of an
otherwise singularly placid and happy existence. Some two years after
her marriage, Fanny Stephenson died, as yet a mere girl, leaving her
lonely husband to take care of their baby boy alone and unaided. Grief
for this irretrievable loss drove the young widower away for a while
from his accustomed field of work among the Tyneside coal-pits; he
accepted an invitation to go to Montrose in Scotland, to overlook the
working of a large engine in some important spinning-works. He remained
in this situation for one year only; but during that time he managed to
give clear evidence of his native mechanical insight by curing a defect
in the pumps which supplied water to his engine, and which had hitherto
defied the best endeavours of the local engineers. The young father was
not unmindful, either, of his duty to his boy, whom he had left behind
with his grandfather on Tyneside; for he saved so large a sum as L28
during his engagement, which he carried back with him in his pocket on
his return to England.

A sad disappointment awaited him when at last he arrived at home. Old
Robert Stephenson, the father, had met with an accident during George's
absence which made him quite blind, and incapacitated him for further
work. Helpless and poor, he had no resource to save him from the
workhouse except George; but George acted towards him exactly as all men
who have in them a possibility of any good thing always do act under
similar circumstances. He spent L15 of his hard-earned savings to pay