Passing through the air
with such velocity--changing the scenes in such rapid
succession--will be the most exhilarating, delightful exercise. A
carriage will set out from Washington in the morning, and the
passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine in Philadelphia, and
sup at New York the same day.
"To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid so nearly
level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a
horizontal line, made of wood or iron, on smooth paths of broken
stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages so that they
may pass each other in different directions and travel by night
as well as by day; and the passengers will sleep in these stages
as comfortably as they do now in steam stage-boats."*
*Cited by Coleman Sellers, Ibid., p. 13.
Another early advocate of steam carriages and railways was John
Stevens, the rich inventor of Hoboken, who figures in the story
of the steamboat. In February, 1812, Stevens addressed to the
commissioners appointed by the State of New York to explore a
route for the Erie Canal an elaborate memoir calculated to prove
that railways would be much more in the public interest than the
proposed canal. He wrote at the same time to Robert R. Livingston
(who, as well as Robert Fulton, his partner in the steamboat, was
one of the commissioners) requesting his influence in favor of
railways.
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