"Our country was filled with enthusiasm and the world with wonder. John Bright, in a splendid tribute to 'his friend Cyrus Field,' spoke of him as 'the Columbus of modern times, who, by his cable, had moored the New World alongside the Old.' Mr. Evarts said: 'Columbus found one world and left it two. Cyrus W. Field found two continents and left them one.' "In all the years that have passed, this cord of connection between the Old World and the New has grown more practical and useful, and the old cities in the far Eastern world can now communicate with the new cities of our Pacific shores in a few moments of time. What will be the result of these facilities we cannot estimate. Already practical schemes for the establishment of communication by telephone are under advisement, and it may be but a short time before we can converse with friends thousands of miles across the sea. "We do not claim for Mr. Field the discovery of the possibilities of the cable, but it was owing to his superb and almost superhuman exertions that the project was made practicable. It is hard for us to estimate the severe trials through which he passed. For nearly thirteen years he labored against every obstacle, crossing the ocean more than forty times, spending months with the cable ships on the stormy Atlantic, exhausting himself in the swamps and inland forests of Newfoundland and Cape Breton, with alternations of hope and fear, of success and discouragement, that would have exhausted almost any other man. "This was the great work of his life, but his energy, vigorous thought, and executive ability enabled him to carry out many other business enterprises, which were of great value to this city and country. "He was born of sturdy and choice New England stock. His father, the Rev. Dr. David Dudley Field, was a distinguished clergyman in Massachusetts, and his grandfather an officer in the Revolution. "His home training, in New England, was of the kind that has developed so many able men in the history of our country. "He very early entered in business, but a few months afterwards, through no fault or action of his, his firm became insolvent, and although from his youth and small capital he was to a certain extent exempt from the responsibility, he showed his nice sense of honor by devoting his first earnings afterwards to the payment of principal and interest of all the debts of the firm with which he had been connected. Years afterwards, when he had been most successful in his chosen line of enterprise, owing to the disturbed condition of affairs he again became involved in business difficulties, but with the same pluck and courage he resumed his work, and paid principal and interest on all his indebtedness.