tried in different schools of engineering, but never under so favorable conditions as the present. With characteristic caution and good judgment, President Morton has studied the operation of the scheme of instruction adopted in the Stevens Institute, and, noting its deficiencies, has now supplied them with munificent liberality, giving to it a completeness that leaves seemingly nothing that could be improved upon, even in a prayer or a dream. Still, no one will be more ready to admit than he who has done all this, that it is not enough to fit up a machine shop, be it never so complete, and light it with an electric lamp. The decision as to its efficiency must come from the students that are so fortunate as to be admitted to it. If such young men, earnest, enthusiastic, with every incentive to exertion and every advantage for improvement, here, where they can feel the throbbing of the great heart of enterprise, within sight of bridges upon which their services will be needed, within hearing of the whistles of a score of railroads, and the bells of countless manufactories which will want them; if such as these, trained under such instructors and amid such surroundings, prove to be not fitted for the positions waiting for them to fill, it will have been definitely demonstrated that the perfect scheme is yet unknown. SPEECH OF MR. HORATIO ALLEN. Impressed with the very great step in advance which has been inaugurated here this evening, I feel crowding upon me so many thoughts that I cannot make sure that, in selecting from them, I may not leave unsaid much that I should say, and say some things that I had better omit. Some years ago, when asked by a wealthy gentleman to what machine-shop he had best send his son, who was to become a mechanical engineer, I advised him not to send him to any, but to fit up a shop for him where he could go and work at what he pleased without the drudgery of apprenticeship, to put him in the way of receiving such information as he needed, and especially to let him go where he could see things break. Great, indeed, are the advantages of those who have the opportunity of seeing things break, of witnessing failures and profiting by them. When men have enumerated the achievements of those most eminent in our profession the thought has often struck me, "Ah! if we could only see that man's scrap heap." There are many who are able to construct a machine for a given purpose so that it will work, but to do this so that it will not cost too much is an entirely different problem. To know what to omit is a rare talent. I once found a young man who could tell students what to store up in their minds for immediate use, and what to skim over or omit; but I could not keep him long, for more lucrative positions are always waiting for such men.