A second flight was planned for that afternoon, and everyone who could exert influence had applied for a pass to the military reservation on Governors Island. But they were disappointed, for the engine blew a cylinder and that brought the series of flights to a close. Almost immediately after his flights for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Wilbur began preparations to train two Army Signal Corps officers, as provided for in the contract for the sale of a plane to the United States Government. This was done at College Park, Maryland, near Washington. The men trained were Lieutenants Frank P. Lahm and Frederic E. Humphreys. Their instruction began on October 8 and was completed October 26. Lieutenant Lahm, who had been the first army officer ever to fly as a passenger in a plane, received the first lesson in pilotage. But Humphreys made the first solo flight, a few minutes before Lahm’s. Wilbur also gave some lessons to Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois between October 23 and 27. Orville and Katharine Wright sailed from Europe on the _Adriatic_, due in New York November 4. After leaving Germany, Orville had investigated the outlook of the recently formed French company. Already it appeared that this company would be a disappointment. Count de Lambert had given the company the best kind of advertising by flying a Wright plane over Paris, around and above the Eiffel Tower. But the French Wright company evidently was depending more on political influence and on entertaining important people than on sound salesmanship. The War Ministry hesitated to buy planes for fear of public criticism. General Picquart, the Army officer who had stood for justice in the Dreyfus case, had become Minister of War. He once inquired of the Wrights if it would be possible to buy their planes directly from them in the United States. That would have been against provisions of the contract with the company in France, but there was another reason why it could not be done. The Wrights were not yet organized to produce planes in great numbers. Though there were now two commercial companies for the manufacture of Wright planes in Europe, no such company yet existed in America. XVII IN AVIATION BUSINESS After companies to manufacture the Wright brothers’ invention had been organized in France and Germany, and a plane had been sold in Italy, it might have been expected that important business people in the United States would see commercial possibilities in the Wright patents. The inventors had, indeed, received offers. One proposal had come from two brothers, in Detroit, influential stockholders in the Packard Automobile Company, Russell A. and Frederick M. Alger--who some time before had been the first in the United States to order a Wright machine for private use. But the first American company to manufacture the plane was promoted by a mere youngster.