It was not until the year 1878, therefore, that it became possible to attempt the organization of the shop course; and it was then only by the writer assuming personal responsibility for its expenses that the plan could be entered upon. As then organized--in the autumn of 1878--a superintendent of the workshop had general direction of the trade department of the school. He was instructed to submit to the writer plans, in detail, for a regular course of shop instruction, and was given as assistants a skilled mechanic of unusual experience and ability, whose compensation was paid from the mechanical laboratory funds, and guaranteed by the writer personally, and another aid whose services were paid for partly by the Institute and partly as above. The pay of the superintendent was similarly assured. This scheme had been barely entered upon when the illness of the writer compelled him to temporarily give up his work, and the direction of the new organization fell into other hands, although the department was carried on, as above, for a year or more after this event occurred. The plan did not fall through; the course of instruction was incorporated into the college course, and its success was finally assured by the growth of the school and a corresponding growth of its income, and, especially, by the liberality of President Morton, who met expenses to the amount of many thousands of dollars by drawing upon his own bank account. The department was by him completely organized, with an energetic head, and needed support was given in funds and by a force of skilled instructors. This school is now in successful operation. This course now also includes the systematic instruction of students in experimental work, and the objects sought by the writer in the creation of a "mechanical laboratory" are thus more fully attained than they could have possibly been otherwise. It is to be hoped that, at some future time, when the splendid bequest of Mr. Stevens may be supplemented by gifts from other equally philanthropic and intelligent friends of technical education, among the alumni of the school and others, this germ of a trade school maybe developed into a complete institution for instruction in the arts and trades of engineering, and may thus be rendered vastly more useful by meeting the great want, in this locality, of a real trade school, as well as fill the requirements of the establishment of which it forms a part, by giving such trade education as the engineer needs and can get time to acquire.