I was conscious also that I was quite prepared to improve this opportunity, grand as it seemed to be. The engine had been abundantly proved. The success of the condenser I felt sure of, a confidence that was found to have been fully justified. Everything on my part was in readiness. The drawings and patterns for several sizes of the engines were complete. I was certainly excusable for anticipating that I should enter at once upon a rapidly growing and prosperous business. With my rude awakening from this “dream of bliss” the reader has already been made acquainted. The causes which had brought these works, so far as their machine-tool department was concerned, down from such a height of excellence as they must for a long time have occupied, to such a depth of ignorance and helplessness as existed on my entrance into them, I never fully knew. I heard that some years before there had been an extensive strike in the works, and that Mr. Whitworth had discharged a large body of skilled workmen and had filled their places with laborers. They had a pretty large drawing-office--empty. I was told that until a short time before my coming they had kept one draftsman employed, but no one paid any attention to his drawings. Mr. Widdowson regarded them merely as suggestions, and he and the foreman pattern-maker altered them as they liked, and finally the farce of having drawings made at all was abandoned. It was not found difficult to run these closely shut works for a long time on their reputation.