I am now about to make a revelation to the reader, that will incidentally
lead him to Mrs. Dodd's conclusion, but by a different path.
The outline she gave her daughter and my reader of Richard Hardie's cold
and prudent youth was substantially correct; but something had occurred
since then, unknown to her, unknown to all Barkington. The centuries had
blown a respectable bubble.
About two hundred and fifty years ago, some genius, as unknown as the
inventor of the lathe, laid the first wooden tramroad, to enable a horse
to draw forty-two cwt. instead of seventeen. The coalowners soon used it
largely. In 1738, iron rails were invented; but prejudice, stronger than
that metal, kept them down, and the wooden ones in vogue, for some thirty
years. Then iron prevailed.
Meantime, a much greater invention had been creeping up to join the metal
way; I mean the locomotive power of steam, whose history is not needed
here. Enough that in 1804 took place as promising a wedding as
civilisation ever saw; for then an engine built by Trevethick, a great
genius frittered for want of pluck, drew carriages, laden with ten tons,
five miles an hour on a Welsh railway.
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