The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. XXXIV.] EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE AT CLAY CROSS. 427
granted out of the fate as prizes for the best cottage garden
vegetables ; the competition for which is held three times a year
in the Public Hall.
Such is the admirable institution now existing at Clay Cross.
The number of persons employed on the works is about fifteen
hundred ; and the amount of good daily eifected by agencies of
the character thus briefly stated can be better imagined than
described. Schools, with a fine public hall, and a handsome
church, have been erected at a cost of many thousand pounds,
towards the expenses of which the Clay Cross Company have
munificently contributed ;
but the main element of success in the
Institution unquestionably consists in the truly, philanthropic
action of the manager, Mr. Binns, who was for so many years
the private secretary of George Stephenson, and in whom his
spirit strongly lives and nobly works.
" The good men do, lives after them," happily holds true quite
as often as the converse maxim embodied in Shakspeare's wellknown
couplet.* The example and influence exercised by a
good man upon his fellows, as by George Stephenson at Clay
Cross during his life, is never lost ; but goes on fructifying into
good, long after his body has mouldered into dust.
* " The evil that men do, lives after them
The good is oft Interred with their bones."
;
JCLItJS CvESAE.