Symbol of Romance.

What does that ticket signify? That you have paid your fare as an honest citizen and have no intention of travelling under the seat. Certainly. But it is a symbol of much more. It calls up the whole romantic story of the growth of steam transport in the world. It takes us back more than one hundred years to that mighty moment when George Stephenson, the boy, idly watching the steam rattling the lid page 59 of the kettle on the fire, discovered the secret of steam power. We see the historic debut in England of the first steam engine made by George Stephenson, the man, and before which weird sight—a vehicle moving unaided as by some black power—horses shied, women cried out, and men marvelled. We see workshops springing up and new industries launched; we see men swarming over the countryside, levelling, digging and blasting; millions of money are set in motion, wheels are set whirling and hammers beating. Like a flame eating up a gunpowder fuse we see the great iron trail creeping throughout the land, splitting up into branches and bringing in its train monsters of iron breathing fire, to feed which, men go down into mines for the black diamonds. The isolation of the country areas of former days ceases to exist as the steam railway penetrates into village and hamlet, and town is linked with town, enabling quick and safe access to the centres of commerce and the rapid despatch of products. We see bunting waving in the breeze, and the gathering of great concourses of people as link upon link is added to the chain of railway communication. In far-flung country cottages families stand in their doorways and wave across the nodding fields of daisies to the wonderful new thing that hurries past with its human freight and load of goods, bound for the throbbing cities.

In the history of transport a new era has opened. Soon there is a stir in countries abroad, and in the East as in the West, the flame of railway transport bursts forth anew, amid a babble of strange tongues. In those following years George Stephenson would have stood dumbfounded at the sight of the bonfire he had lighted on that September day of 1825.

That is the stirring story told us by the little ticket we can buy at any railway station in New Zealand. It is a tremendous trifle.