the meeting was over he invited me to walk with him, and said to me: “I suppose you have observed that I have not visited the Southwark Foundry lately.” I told him I had observed it. He then said: “Do you remember that bill?” I told him I did very well, and how vainly I had protested against its being sent. He said: “When that bill was brought to me for approval, I hesitated about putting my initials to it until I had shown it to Mr. Agassiz. I told him what the job was and the bill was quite twice as large as I had expected. He replied, ‘Pay it, but don’t go to them any more,’ and I have taken our work to the Dickson Manufacturing Company at Scranton.” I realized that I had lost the most influential engineering friend I had since the death of Mr. Holley. I heard some years after, and believe it, though I do not vouch for its correctness, that the work sent to the Dickson Manufacturing Company through Mr. Leavitt had in one year exceeded one hundred thousand dollars. [Illustration: E. D. LEAVITT] Some time previous to these events, Mr. Merrick had done a very high-handed thing. Assuming supreme power as president of the company, he had invaded my department, and, without a word to me, had appointed over Mr. Goodfellow a superintendent to suit himself, reducing Mr. Goodfellow to be general foreman of the machine-shop, to take his orders from the new superintendent and not from me, whereupon Mr. Goodfellow resigned, and accepted a position as master mechanic in the Pennsylvania Steel Works, and by his advice the engine ordered by them from me was taken from the Southwark Foundry in its incomplete condition and finished by themselves under Mr. Goodfellow’s direction. Mr. Merrick then filled Mr. Goodfellow’s place with another friend of his own as general foreman, a man who would have been as valuable as a stick of wood but for his incessant blunders. I was fully alive to the arbitrary nature of this usurpation, but was entirely helpless, knowing perfectly well that the directors would sustain the president in whatever he did. With the coming of the new superintendent, the fatal change took place. He came, first of all, full of the superiority of Philadelphia mechanics, and, second, feeling that in the nature of things I must be entirely ignorant of anything mechanical. I was nothing but a New York lawyer; never did a day’s work in a shop in my life; had gone into a business I was not educated to and knew nothing about. My presuming to give orders to mechanics, and Philadelphia mechanics too, filled him with indignation. He would not take an order from me--perish the thought--and as for my drawings, he would depart from them as much as he liked.