Naturally, to such a boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father’s colliery.  Great was Geordie’s joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish.  It wasn’t a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.  Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow his own inclinations in the direction of mechanical labour.  Besides, was he not earning the grand sum of sixpence a day as picker, increased to eightpence a little later on, when he rose to the more responsible and serious work of driving the gin-horse?  A proud day indeed it was for him when, at fourteen, he was finally permitted to aid his father in firing the colliery engine; though he was still such a very small boy that he used to run away and hide when the owner went his rounds of inspection, for fear he should be thought too little to earn his untold wealth of a shilling a day in such a grown-up occupation.  Humbler beginnings were never any man’s who lived to become the honoured guest, not of kings and princes only, but of the truly greatest and noblest in the land.

A coal-miner’s life is often a very shifting one; for the coal in particular collieries gets worked out from time to time; and he has to remove, accordingly, to fresh quarters, wherever employment happens to be found.  This was very much the case with George Stephenson and his family; all of them being obliged to remove several times over during his childish days in search of new openings.  Shortly after Geordie had attained to the responsible position of assistant fireman, his father was compelled, by the closing of Dewley Burn mine, to get a fresh situation hard by at Newburn.  George accompanied him, and found employment as full fireman at a small working, whose little engine he undertook to manage in partnership with a mate, each of them tending the fire night and day by twelve-hour shifts.  Two years later, his wages were raised to twelve shillings a week, a sure mark of his diligent and honest work; so that George was not far wrong in remarking to a fellow-workman at the time that he now considered himself a made man for life.

During all this time, George Stephenson never for a moment ceased to study and endeavour to understand the working of every part in the engine that he tended.  He was not satisfied, as too many workmen are, with merely learning the routine work of his own trade; with merely knowing that he must turn such and such a tap or valve in order to produce such and such a desired result:  he wanted to see for himself how and why the engine did this or that, what was the use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser—­in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction.