Mr. Horatio Allen’s life-long aversion to Mr. Sickels was caused by professional jealousy. Mr. Allen conceived himself to be an inventor, and for years had been cherishing a cut-off invention of his own. The original firm was Stillman, Allen & Co., and for years Mr. Stillman had prevented the Novelty Iron Works from being sacrificed to Mr. Allen’s genius, but later Mr. Allen had obtained supreme control of these works by an affiliation with Brown Brothers, the bankers, his principal stockholders, and Mr. Stillman sold out his interest and retired from the firm. Mr. Allen, having a clear field, now determined to put his invention on the new steamer of the Collins line, the “Adriatic,” and American engineers were amused at the display of this amazing absurdity on the largest possible scale. In this construction there were four valves; each valve was a conical plug about six feet long and had four movements; first it was withdrawn from its seat a distance of three inches so that it could be rotated freely, then it was rotated first to draw off the lap. Up to this point theoretically the port had not been opened, but the steam had been blowing into the cylinder or out of it, as the case might be, through these enormous cracks; the valves then rotated further to produce the opening movement, for either admission or release; the rotation was then reversed until it reached its original position, then the fourth movement brought it to its seat. It is probable that the ship would have gone to sea working steam after this ridiculous fashion, if the complicated mechanism required to produce the four movements had not broken down at the trial of the engines at the dock, beyond the power of Mr. Allen’s genius to remedy; so the valves had to be removed and the Stevens valves and Sickels cut-off were substituted for them. The story that any sane man ever designed a four-motion steam-engine valve, and that he made the first application of it on the largest steamship, except the Great Eastern, then in the world, is such a tax on credulity, that I was glad to find the following corroboration of it in a letter to “Power,” from which I copy the essential portion. [Illustration: EMIL BRUGSCH] “In one of Mr. Porter’s ‘Reminiscences,’ which I have mislaid, he gives an account of the alterations to the last steamer of the E. K. Collins lines, the ‘Adriatic.’ His description of Horatio Allen’s cock-valves and their motions is absolutely correct. The writer made the greater part of the detail drawings by which the new valves and the Sickels cut-off were placed on the ‘Adriatic.’ PETER VAN BROCK. Jefferson, Iowa.” These engines, as further designed by Mr. Allen, were afterwards described by Zerah Colburn in the London _Engineer_ in his usual caustic style. His description began with this expression: “These engines are fearfully and wonderfully made.”