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,