we almost forgot our condition. The next day was Sunday. The hurricane had not abated. The pumps had simply kept the ship afloat. The greater number of the passengers wanted to have a prayer-meeting, and ask the Deity to stop the storm. There was no authorized representative on board, except a Catholic priest, and he was one of the best and truest men I ever met. He kneeled down in the cabin among us all, and, without any ritual or any Latin, he described our peril and our wants in a few graphic and fervent words, which put us in harmony with the situation. Then the storm broke, and the next morning was bright and sunny. For ten days, we sailed and paddled with our well wheel back to Queenstown.

Colburn and Holley's report-a handsome folio, with 51 engraved plates-appeared in 1858, under the title, The Permanent Way and Coal-burning Locomotive Boilers of European Railways. with a Comparison of the Working Economy of European and American Lines, and the Principles upon which Improvement must Proceed. This title is admirable, because it exactly expresses the three-fold nature of the work, which comprises a description of foreign plant and practice, a demonstration of American inferiority, and a recommendation of practicable improvements.

The book reflects much credit on its authors in many ways, With characteristic courage and ambition, they issued it in a style which they could ill afford, and which makes it even to this day one of the handsomest of engineering books. It was a bold venture, even outwardly, and its contents were bolder yet. When we remember that Colburn and Holley were abroad less than three months, collecting the materials for it, we are astonished at its completeness and accuracy. They were "tremendous workers." Holley's letters show that after a few days given to the new delights of travel, and the sights in London, he settled down to intense labor, visiting railway shops and offices, and devoting days and nights to writing and drawing. The excellent descriptions thus prepared, might, however, have fallen unnoticed in the presence of a public little able to appreciate mere engineering details. It was the "Comparison," made by Colburn, which appealed directly and irresistibly to American railway managers-" countingroom engineers," as Holley was wont contemptuously to call them -with its overwhelming demonstration of the financial economy of the best construction and the best machinery. In 1860, Holley

wrote:

"The first half of the last decade was distinguished by the opening, as if by magic, of thousands of miles of railway; the last half has been distinguished in revealing the fact that the roads thus open are yet to be built.

This revelation was effectually made by Colburn's "Comparison."

It was not enough to show that the annual operating expense of American railways was $120,000,000 against $80,000,000 for the same mileage in England-an excess of $40,000,000; that the annual maintenance of the road-bed cost $33,000,000 here, against $12,500,000 there-an excess of $20,500,000; that the cost of fuel was $18,000,000, against $7,500,000, thus giving as total expenses, $171,000,000 in America and $100,000,000 for the same mileage abroad. Any industrious compiler could present such figures; and the counting room answer was ready. "Such comparisons could not be made. The conditions were utterly different in the two countries. English lines are very expensively built, and what was saved in current expense was paid out in interest on first cost. The grades were lighter than ours; the traffic was more favorable; there was cheap fuel and pauper labor." This sort of vague qualitative talk is what all reforms encounter; and it must be met with quantitative demonstration. In all such questions there is "truth on both sides;" but the scientific inquirer weighs the truth, and ascertains on which side is the ultimate overweight. In this ease, Colburn proceeded to discuss in detail all the varying conditions, and to give a precise value to each. He showed that of the superior English economy of nearly 60 per cent. in the maintenance of permanent way, only about half was due to favoring circumstances; that of the 44 per cent. superior economy in fuel, only 15 per cent. could be thus explained; that the necessary difference in first cost was far less than had been supposed. By an exhaustive analysis, he tracked the saving to its sources, and proved these to be chiefly the locomotive and the permanent way. This was an argument which financiers could understand. The press took it up, and drove it home. The leading New York dailies. came out with long leaders (mostly contributed by Holley) on the causes of the depreciation in railroad property, and drew from this book overwhelming proofs. The English press, of course, rejoiced in its acknowledgement of English superiority. Even the patriotic rage displayed by some of our journals, regarding this conceited attack on American institutions, helped to advertise the book. Taken together with its successor, Holley's Railway Practice (of which I will speak presently), it inaugurated and did much to effect a revolution. As to the completeness of the mechanical part of it (which was Holley's special portion), I may here quote a remark once made to me by a leading railway engineer of this country. Said he, "I keep the book in my office still; and frequently when

inventors call on me with their new ideas about rails, and joints, and sleepers, and boilers, and so on, I open Colburn and Holley, and show them their inventions, already described and discussed.”

From Holley's letters during 1858, it is evident that he traveled extensively, soliciting subscriptions from railway companies to cover the cost of publishing the report, and also selling other scientific books on commission to cover his expenses. Probably during this period he made the acquaintance of Mr. Henry J. Raymond, founder and editor of the New York Times. His first article in that paper was a vigorous editorial on railway management, published November 9, 1858.

Mr. Raymond was characteristically quick to recognize, encourage, and attach to his corps of editors, reporters, and correspondents young men of talent and ambition. He realized that he had found a prize in Holley, who speedily became a frequent contributor to the Times. I have found 276 articles from his pen, published in that paper, of which about 200 appeared between 1858 and 1863, and the remainder at rarer intervals to 1875, the last being the leading editorial of April 27, 1875, on the recently appointed United States Testing Board. The range of these articles is indicated by the following classification: Setting aside 52 miscellaneous articles (descriptive, political, etc.), and 30 which may be called "scattering," though devoted to engineering topics, we have 194, divided as follows: Railways (including street railways), 49; steam navigation, 42; war ships and armor, 30; the Stevens battery, 22; arms and ordnance, 19; boiler explosions, 11; and steam engines, 7. The most important and remarkable of these articles were, perhaps, those on the Great Eastern, written under the signature of "Tubal Cain." In 1859, he accompanied Mr. Raymond to Europe as a Times correspondent, made the acquaintance of Brunel and Scott Russell, and thoroughly studied the structure and details of the great ship. His description (October, 1859) of the vessel and its machinery (accompanied with drawings), his account of the trial trip, the accidental explosion occurring on that occasion, the coroner's inquest, etc., and his discussion of various engineering and commercial questions thus suggested, present a wonderful combination of technical, critical, and literary skill. The articles attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Times assumed a position of authority on engineering topics not before or since occupied by a New York daily newspaper.

In 1860 Holley again went to Europe for the Times, and re

turned on the first transatlantic trip of the Great Eastern. This time his equally remarkable letters were divided between the Times and the American Railway Review, of which in the meantime he had become editor of the mechanical department. The Review was a New York weekly. His connection with it began with its second volume, in January, 1860, and lasted about eighteen months. Among the first things he contributed to it was a description and explanation of the Giffard injector, then a novelty. An examination of the columns of this paper and of the Times throws an interesting light on the manner in which he contrived to do so much literary and professional work. He made one hand wash the other. The topics treated for the general public in the Times were served up in more technical form in the Review. The anonymous editor in the Times frequently quoted and commented upon the avowed editor of the Review, and vice versa. But all this was merely the incidental, though necessary, occupation of this period. He wrote to earn money, and he wrote with the rapidity and versatility of a Bohemian; but all the time his eye was upon his profession, and his articles were but the chips thrown off in the labor of preparing his "American and European Railway Practice," which appeared at the close of 1860. This was, so far as the subject of permanent way is concerned, a digest of the report of Colburn and Holley, but it was a great deal more. The subjects of the combustion of coal, its use in locomotives, the economical generation of steam, the proper construction of boilers, etc., were thoroughly discussed, and the whole problem was treated with the precision of a judge combined with the earnestness of an advocate. The defects of American railway management in these particulars were exposed with satire and indignation. The book was, in even a higher degree than its predecessor, an epoch-making one. Our railway practice in the branches of which it treats has done little more than follow its guidance, and its recommendations and warnings are not yet out of date.

In the preface to this work, Holley acknowledges assistance received from Mr. J. K. Fisher, well known to New Yorkers as an engineer of talent and an inventor who tried hard-and failed-to introduce steam carriages on common roads. In the latter experiment, Holley gave him some professional and financial assistance. The money was lost; but out of this, as out of all other experiences of his life, he drew a dividend of added knowledge. I believe he never ceased to consider the steam-carriage and traction engine as

caloric engine, as an enterprise which "may yet be consummated in a future neither chimerical nor distant." This was just after the trial of Ericsson's steamer, and before the general recognition of the fact that heated air is useful and economical for small motors, though it cannot compete on a large scale with steam. I use the words of the distinguished inventor of the caloric engine-a man whose brilliant list of great successes renders him well able to afford the confession of a failure, and who, in the true spirit of science, has drawn from this disappointment grounds for gratitude. "The marine engineer," writes Mr. Ericsson, "has thus been encouraged to renew his efforts to perfect the steam-engine, without fear of rivalry from a motor depending on the dilatation of atmospheric air by heat." (Contributions to the Centennial Exhibition, 1876, p. 438.)

Holley's faith in the genius of Ericsson was confirmed in later years, in connection with the triumphs of the screw propeller and of the turreted iron-clad. And Ericsson's generous appreciation of Holley appears in a letter written since the death of the latter, and speaking of him as "the brightest ornament of American engineering."

After leaving college, Holley entered the shops of Corliss & Nightingale, at Providence. They were at the time engaged in the attempt to apply to the locomotive engine the principles of the variable cut-off, so successful in the stationary engine. Holley entered the locomotive department, where he served both as draughtsman and machinist, and subsequently took the "Advance" out on the Stonington Railroad, where he ran it as engineer long enough to show the practicability of so doing, and, I believe, to effect the sale of the engine. In economy of steam, as shown by indicator diagrams, the "Advance" was superior to existing link-motion and lap-valve locomotives, but the detached variable cut-off was too delicate an arrangement to endure the jar of such rough service. Another arrangement was substituted; but this, too, rattled to pieces; and even in the form finally adopted, the "Advance" was not practically a machine to be enthusiastically welcomed, particularly upon such road-beds as were then characteristic of America.

In his speech on "The Pursuit of Science," at the Hartford dinner of the Society of Mechanical Engineers, Holley revived his reminiscences of the "Advance." Said he:

"The idea began to obtain that science should be pursued not in books, but in things; and I commenced the pursuit of science in and on and under one of