George's cottage showed the bent of his tastes. It was like an old curiosity shop; full of models of engines, complete or in parts, hanging and standing round; for busy as he had need to be eking out his means by engineering clocks and coats, the construction and improvement of machinery for the collieries was his hobby.
Likeness of tastes drew a young farmer often to the cottage, John Wigham, who spent most of his evenings in George's society. John had a smattering of chemistry and philosophy, and a superior knowledge of mathematics, which made him a desirable companion. George put himself under his tuition, and again took to "figuring;" tasks set him in the evening were worked out among the rough toils of the day. And so much honest purpose did not fail to secure progress. Drawing was another new line of effort. Sheets of plans and sections gave his rude desk the air of mindwork somewhere. Thus their winter evenings passed away.
Bobby was growing up in a little thought-world by himself; for he could not fail to be interested in all that interested his father, that father always making his son the companion of his studies, and early introducing him into the curious and cunning power of machinery.
Ah, that was a proud day when little Bob was old enough, and knew enough, to be sent to the academy at Newcastle. He was thirteen. His father's means had happily been increased. The old engine-wright of the colliery having died, George Stephenson was promoted to the post, on the salary of over a hundred pounds a year. This was in 1812.
The new office relieving him from incessant hard work, and the necessity of earning a shilling by extra labours, he had more time for study, and for verifying his plans of practical improvement; and the consequence was very considerable improvement in the machinery of the colliery to which he was attached.
Meanwhile Robert's education went on apace. The boy was hungry for knowledge, not only for himself, but to satisfy the voracious appetite of his father, and the no less keen one of John Wigham.
Robert joined a literary and philosophical society at Newcastle, whose fine library opened a rich storehouse of material. Here the boy spent most of his time out of school, storing his mind with principles, facts, and illustrations, to carry home on Saturday afternoon. Books also. The Edinburgh Encyclopædia was at his command. A volume of that at the cottage unfolded a world of wonders. But the library had some books too choice to be trusted away. How was Robert to get the gist of these home? His father had often said that a "good drawing and a well-executed plan would always explain itself," and many a time he had placed a rough sketch of machinery before his son and told him to describe it. Robert, therefore, when he could do no better, put his drilling to test, and copied diagrams and drew pictures, thus taking many an important and perhaps rare specimen of machinery and science to Killingworth, for his father's benefit.
We can well imagine Saturday afternoon was as much a holiday to father as to son. Robert's coming was hailed with delight. John did not lag far behind. Some of the neighbours dropped in to listen to discussions which made the little room a spot of lively interest and earnest toil. Wide-awake mind allows nothing stagnant around it.
Among the borrowed books of the day was Ferguson's "Astronomy," which put father and son to calculating and constructing a sun-dial for the latitude of Killingworth. It was wrought in stone, and fixed on the cottage door; and there it stands still, with its date, August 11, 1816—a year or two before Robert left school—a fair specimen of the drift of his boyish tastes.