this most peculiar and exceptional opportunity for its application, absolutely the only chance for its sale that had appeared, and that at the very last moment, prevented my returning home in disappointment. It is hardly necessary to add that the engine proved completely successful. I shall refer to it again. The point of the incident is this: It established the fact, the statement of which otherwise no one from the result would credit for an instant, that, from the afternoon when the black and averted looks of my loom exhibitors were changed to smiling congratulations down to the close of the exhibition, the engine never once had a warm bearing or was interrupted for a single moment. It was visited by every engineer in England, and by a multitude of engine users, was admired by every one, and won the entire confidence of all observers in its speed, its regulation, and the perfection of its diagrams; and yet in all that six months not a builder ever said a word about building it, nor a user said a word about using it; and, as week after week and month after month passed without a sign, I became almost stupefied with astonishment and distress. The explanation of this phenomenon was entirely simple, but I did not know it, and there was no one to even hint it to me. I was among a people whose fundamental ideas respecting steam-engines were entirely different from those to which I had been accustomed, and I knew nothing about them, and so could not address myself to them. In the view of every Englishman a non-condensing engine was rubbish. Those which were made were small, cheap affairs, mostly for export. Neither a builder nor a user could regard a non-condensing engine with the slightest interest. Now I do not think that in my limited sphere of observation at home I had ever seen a condensing stationary engine, except the engine which pumped out the dry-dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In my mind condensing engines were associated with ships and steamboats. At this exhibition also there were shown only non-condensing engines. I did not think of the reason for this, that in this part of London, far away from the Thames, no water could be had for condensing purposes. I took it all as a matter of course, though I was astonished at the queer lot of engines in the company of which I found myself. I was, of course, familiar with the development of the stationary engine in England from the original type, in which the pressure of steam below that of the atmosphere, and sometimes the pressure of the atmosphere itself furnished the larger proportion of the power exerted; but after all I carried with me my American ideas, which were limited to non-condensing engines, and had no conception of the gulf that separated my thoughts from those of the men about me.