. Wonders and curiosities of the railway; or, Stories of the locomotive in every land; with an appendix, bringing the volume down to date . orse-power car worked pi-etty well,but on one occasion, when drawing a number of editorsand other representatives of the press, the machine raninto a cow, and ignominiously upset the inspecting com-pany in a ditch. And, inasmuch as the company had toendure thereafter innumerable bad jokes and puns (forexample, the cowed editors), they naturally passed anunfavorable verdict upon the machine which had subjectedthem to this annoyance. How it next came to pass
. Wonders and curiosities of the railway; or, Stories of the locomotive in every land; with an appendix, bringing the volume down to date . orse-power car worked pi-etty well,but on one occasion, when drawing a number of editorsand other representatives of the press, the machine raninto a cow, and ignominiously upset the inspecting com-pany in a ditch. And, inasmuch as the company had toendure thereafter innumerable bad jokes and puns (forexample, the cowed editors), they naturally passed anunfavorable verdict upon the machine which had subjectedthem to this annoyance. How it next came to pass that Peter Cooper built hislittle engine, the Tom Thumb, and made his famous 40 WOl^DERS AN^D CURIOSITIES OP THE RAILWAY. trial-trip on the railroad, he must be allowed to tell in hisown graphic way:* It is now about fifty-five years since I was drawn intoa speculation in Baltimore. Two men there, whom I knewslightly, came up and asked me to join them in buying atract of three thousand acres of land within the city included the shore for three miles, and the new Balti-more and Ohio railroad was going to run through it. The. (By courtesy of the *• Railway Age.)PETER coopers LOCOMOTIVE. road was chartered, and a little of it was graded. Its carswere to be drawn by horses; nobody thought of the possi-bility of steam. I consulted my friend Gideon Lee, whoserved as alderman with me fifty-two years ago now, andhe advised me that it was a good scheme. He said the landwas worth five hundred thousand dollars, whether the roadwas ever finished or not. So I went to Baltimore, saw theland, and agreed to take one-third, and paid my money,twenty thousand dollars. * As reported in the Boston Sunday Herald for July 9, 1883, THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILROADS. 41 They drew on me every little while for taxes, etc., andwhen, at the end of a year, I went down again, I found outthat neither of my partners had paid a cent on the pur-chase, and that I had been sending down money to paytheir bo
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