$700,000 apiece, a
good share of which went toward enhancing the comfort of passengers. To
our English cousins these ships were at first as much of a curiosity as
our vestibuled trains were a few years since. When the "Atlantic" first
reached Liverpool in 1849, the townspeople by the thousand came down to
the dock to examine a ship with a barber shop, fitted with the curious
American barber chairs enabling the customer to recline while being
shaved. The provision of a special deck-house for smokers, was another
innovation, while the saloon, sixty-seven by twenty feet, the dining
saloon sixty by twenty, the rich fittings of rosewood and satinwood,
marble-topped tables, expensive upholstery, and stained-glass windows,
decorated with patriotic designs, were for a long time the subject of
admiring comment in the English press. Old voyagers who crossed in the
halcyon days of the Collins line and are still taking the "Atlantic
ferry," agree in saying that the increase in actual comfort is not so
great as might reasonably be expected. Much of the increased expenditures
of the companies has gone into more gorgeous decoration, vastly more of
course into pushing for greater speed; but even in the early days there
was a lavish table, and before the days of the steamships the packets
offered such private accommodations in the of roomy staterooms as can be
excelled only by the "cabins de luxe" of the modern liner. Aside from the
question of speed, however, it is probable that the two inventions which
have added most to the passengers' comfort are the electric light and
artificial refrigeration.

The Collins line charged from thirty to forty dollar a ton for freight, a
charge which all the modern improvements and the increase in the size of
vessels, has not materially lessened. In six years, however, the
corporation was practically bankrupt. The high speed required by the
Government more than offset the generous subsidy, and misfortune seemed to
pursue the ships. The "Arctic" came into collision with a French steamer
in 1854, and went down with two hundred and twenty-two of the two hundred
and sixty-eight people on board. The "Pacific" left Liverpool June 23,
1856, and was never more heard of. Shortly thereafter the subsidy was
withdrawn, and the famous line went slowly down to oblivion.

It was during the best days of the Collins line that it seemed that the
United States might overtake Great Britain in the race for supremacy on
th