And he was right.  For the man who, after satisfying his wants, has something to spare, is no longer poor.  It is certain that from that day Stephenson never looked back; his advance as a self-improving man was as steady as the light of sunrise.  A person of large experience has indeed stated that he never knew, amongst working people, a single instance of a man having out of his small earnings laid by a pound, who had in the end become a pauper.

When Stephenson proposed to erect his first locomotive, he had not sufficient means to defray its cost.  But in the course of his life as a workman, he had established a character.  He was trusted.  He was faithful.  He was a man who could be depended on.  Accordingly, when the Earl of Havensworth was informed of Stephenson’s desire to erect a locomotive, he at once furnished him with the means for enabling him to carry his wishes into effect.

Watt, also, when inventing the condensing steam-engine, maintained himself by making and selling mathematical instruments.  He made flutes, organs, compasses,—­anything that would maintain him, until he had completed his invention.  At the same time he was perfecting his own education—­learning French, German, mathematics, and the principles of natural philosophy.  This lasted for many years; and by the time that Watt developed his steam-engine and discovered Mathew Boulton, he had, by his own efforts, become an accomplished and scientific man.

These great workers did not feel ashamed of labouring with their hands for a living; but they also felt within themselves the power of doing head-work as well as hand-work.  And while thus labouring with their hands, they went on with their inventions, the perfecting of which has proved of so much advantage to the world.  Hugh Miller furnished, in his own life, an excellent instance of that practical common sense in the business of life which he so strongly recommended to others.  When he began to write poetry, and felt within him the growing powers of a literary man, he diligently continued his labour as a stone-cutter.

Horace Walpole has said that Queen Caroline’s patronage of Stephen Duck, the thresher poet, ruined twenty men, who all turned poets.  It was not so with the early success of Hugh Miller.  “There is no more fatal error,” he says, “into which a working man of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too good for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is fatal.  I had already seen several poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, and become in consequence little better than mendicants,—­too good to work for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and looking upon them as beacons of warning, I determined that, with God’s help, I should give their error a wide offing, and never associate the idea of meanness with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent.”