Cables, Submarine -- History; Field, Cyrus W. (Cyrus West), 1819-1892; Inventors -- United States -- Biography
"But no details of ordinary business could confine his wide grasp
of affairs, and he took hold of telegraph and cable with a faith
and energy which deserved success.
"Time and distance were as nothing to him on carrying out his
projects. Although a loyal and enthusiastic American, he was, in
the best sense, a 'citizen of the world.' I remember meeting him
many years ago in southern Europe, and asking him to join some
excursion for the following day. He told me how much pleasure it
would give him, but that he unfortunately had to attend a meeting
the next day. I found that he left that night by the fast express,
and rushed through to London to spend two hours at a meeting of a
committee, and without rest returned immediately to the place where
I had met him.
"His last years were crowded with sorrow and disappointment, under
circumstances most pathetic and terrible. In all of this he had the
warm sympathy of loving friends and of all his business associates.
"I have felt that the terrific strain upon his whole system during
the thirteen years of trial, when the efforts were being made to
lay the cable, with their alternations of hope and fear and the
great exposure, told upon his constitution more than he knew, and
that when the reaction came he had not, perhaps, the same clearness
of vision and wise power of judgment as before.
"All the disappointment and sadness of his later life will be
forgotten, and history will only remember the great loyal American,
whose intense power and large faith enabled him to carry through
one of the greatest and most beneficial enterprises the world has
ever known."
"Ah, me! how dark the discipline of pain
Were not the suffering followed by the sense
Of infinite rest and infinite release!
This is our consolation; and again
A great soul cries to us in our suspense:
'I came from martyrdom unto this peace!'"
THE END
* * * * *
RHODES'S UNITED STATES
History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. By JAMES
FORD RHODES. 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops. Vols. I. and
II., 1850-1860, $5 00; Vol. III., 1860-1862, $2 50.
If there is a book now in course of publication which supplies an
urgent want, it is the "History of the United States from the
Compromise of 1850," by James Ford Rhodes.... It was high time that
the service herein rendered by the author of this work should have
been performed.--_N. Y. Sun._
Mr. Rhodes's pages bring before us a vivid picture of what we were
forty years ago.... The author's candid and impartial spirit are as
evident as his intelligence.--_N. Y. Times._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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