E.K.  Collins was a New York shipping merchant, the organizer and manager of one of the most famous of the old lines of sailing packets between that port and Liverpool—­the Dramatic line, so called from the fact that its ships were named after popular actors of the day.  Recognizing the fact that the sailing ship was fighting a losing fight against the new style of vessels, Mr. Collins interested a number of New York merchants in a distinctly American line of transatlantic ships.  It was no easy task.  Capital was not over plenty in the American city which now boasts itself the financial center of the world, while the opportunities for its investment in enterprises longer proved and less hazardous than steamships were numerous.  But a Government mail subsidy of $858,000 annually promised a sound financial basis, and made the task of capitalization possible.  It seems not unlikely that the vicissitudes of the line were largely the result of this subsidy, for one of its conditions was extremely onerous:  namely, that the vessels making twenty-six voyages annually between New York and Liverpool, should always make the passage in better time than the British Cunard line, which was then in its eighth year.  However, the Collins line met the exaction bravely.  Four vessels were built, the “Atlantic,” “Pacific,” “Arctic,” and “Baltic,” and the time of the fleet for the westward passage averaged eleven days, ten hours and twenty-one minutes, while the British ships averaged twelve days, nineteen hours and twenty-six minutes—­a very substantial triumph for American naval architecture.  The Collins liners, furthermore, were models of comfort and even of luxury for the times.  They averaged a cost of $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.