The Coconino weekly sun., 1894-08-09
HISTORY OF RAILROADS.
The Man Who First Imagined a LOcomo
 tive Was Put in Madhouse.

| The Man Who First Imagined a LOcOm0-
 tive Was Put in Madhouse.
 The man who first thought of apply ing steam to traction, poor Solomon de Caus, Frenchman, was shut up in the Bicetre as a madman. When Maron Deorme and the marquise of Worces- ter went through the institution in 1641, they saw frightful face behind the bars, and heard hoarse voice cry- ing, q am not mad! have made dis covery that would enrich the country" What has he discoyered?" they asked the keeper. "Oh," said the man with a shrug, ''you would never guess it. It is the use of the steam of boiling wa ter"
 Long after that when the thing had become reality, old Lord Eaton took up his parable against it. q am sorry" he said, ''to find the intelligent people of the north country gone mad on the subject of railways. What could be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospects held out of locomo- tives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches?" Some said that the railways would prevent cows grazing and hens laying, and that the poisoned air from the engines would kill birds in flight, and render the preservation of pheas- ants and foxes no longer possible. A rash man in Liverpool, whose name has not been preserved, declared that if anyone could make locomotive go ten miles an hour he would afterward eat the wheel in stew.
 The next stage to incredibility was wonder and awe. "Such was it's veloc- ity," says one writer, describing run of one of the first trains, "that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour" Another writer re- marked that even at the tremendous speed of twenty-five miles an hour, the passengers, and even the ladies among them, ''were talking to one another with the utmost sangfroid."
 But the speed of twenty-five miles was not attained all at once. One of Stephenson's earliest creations, Puff fing Billy" travelled with so much diff ficulty that the driver as it crawled round an awkward curve near his cot tage, used to call to his wife to come OuJ RlNC lJ d SllONt. Dlluu OD- struction took every possible form. The surveyors often had to work by night to save themselves from the wrath of the land owners and farmers. One foolish parson in the north was so troublesome that they could only do their work while he was engaged in the pulpit.
 The railways have not justified any of the prophets of evil. They have not even killed romance, adventure or fun. There are fascinating stories of rail- way incident, of desperate leaps from trains-including that leap of Charles Peace, which must surely go down to history with Turpin's jump over the five-barred gate on the ride to York. Runaway trains are not unknown for those who like that kind of excitement. On an American railway there was once a mad driver, who, after pitching the stoker off the engine, turned on all the steam he could un- til the machine got red hot and flew along at nearly hundred miles an hour The terrified passengers did not leave off talking even then, but they shardly talked with sangfroid. The guard crept along until he reached the en- zine, when he saw the excited creature gesticulating wildly and putting on more coals. But well-aimed blow on the head laid him low, and the train was stopped
 There is a pretty story of porter's trouble with a giraffe on one of our northern lines. He could not induce the beast to get himself comfortably packed in the truck. "They calls him jaraff, " he said to the guard, but all call him long-legged, chattering fool, and all reckon tha1l have some strugglin' wi him thisen when t'train gets t first bridge. If tho doesn't tie his neck in a knot he'll have his head knocked off" The naturalist, Buckland, who was great practical locker, was fond of pro- ducing extraordinary animals from his coat pocket and gravely asking the booking clerk the cost of transit. "What will that go for?" he asked one day, as he produced tortoise. "They're nothing" said the man, with scorn, after vainly looking through the schedule, they're an insek." A county court judge in South Wales once ad- journed case from his own court to a railway carriage, and, taking solicitors and witnesses along with him, gave his decision at the end of the run.-London News.