"I remain "Sincerely yours, "JAMES ANDERSON." CHAPTER XII THE CABLE LAID--CABLE OF 1865 GRAPPLED FOR AND RECOVERED--PAYMENT OF DEBTS (1866) Mr. Field said of this crisis: "I reached London on the 24th of December, 1865, and the next day was not a 'Merry Christmas' to me. But it was an inexpressible comfort to have the counsel of such men as Sir Daniel Gooch and Sir Richard A. Glass; and Mr. Brassey said, 'Mr. Field, don't be discouraged; go down to the company and tell them to go ahead, and whatever the cost, I will bear one-tenth of the whole. "It was finally concluded that the best course was to organize a new company, which should assume the work; and so originated the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. It was formed by ten gentlemen who met around a table in London and put down £10,000 apiece. "The great Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, undaunted by the failure of last year, answered us with a subscription of £100,000. Soon after, the books were opened to the public through the eminent banking house of J. S. Morgan & Co., and in fourteen days we had raised the whole £600,000. Then the work began again, and went on with speed. Never was greater energy infused into any enterprise. It was only the first day of March that the new company was formed, and was registered as a company the next day; and yet such were the vigor and despatch that in five months from that day the cable had been manufactured, shipped on the _Great Eastern_, stretched across the Atlantic, and was sending messages, literally swift as lightning, from continent to continent. The cable was manufactured at the rate of twenty miles a day." Captain Anderson wrote from the _Great Eastern_ at Sheerness on March 2d: "I hope you are keeping well and not sacrificing your health for even the Atlantic cable." After referring to some slight complications, he adds: "But this will all come right, as you so often say, and surely we shall live to laugh at it yet. At least you ought to have your day of triumph, as you have had your long years of struggle." March 5th, Captain Moriarty wrote from H.M.S. _Fox_: "I am as sanguine as even yourself in the practicability and almost certainty of raising the present cable, and feel all the more interested in it in consequence of the incredulity of naval men and others." Mr. Field gave a dinner at the Buckingham Palace Hotel on April 5th; the American minister, Mr. Adams, sat on his right, and the Earl of Caithness on his left. _The Morning Star_, in speaking of the dinner, said: "Mr. Field, with almost inspired fervor, spoke of the certainty with which it would soon be possible to speak between England and America in a minute of time." "ROCHDALE, _March 26, '66_.