“Through these watery solitudes, among the fountains of the great deep, the abode of perpetual silence, never visited by living human presence and beyond the sight of human eye, there are gliding to and fro, by night and by day, in light and in darkness, in calm and in tempest, currents of human thought borne by the electric pulse which obeys the bidding of man. That slender wire thrills with the hopes and fears of nations; it vibrates to every emotion that can be awakened by any event affecting the welfare of the human race. “A volume of contemporary history passes every hour of the day from one continent to another. An operator on the continent of Europe gently touches the keys of an instrument in his quiet room, a message is shot with the swiftness of light through the abysses of the sea, and before his hand is lifted from the machine the story of revolts and revolutions, of monarchs dethroned and new dynasties set up in their place, of battles and conquests and treaties of peace, of great statesmen fallen in death, lights of the world gone out and new luminaries glimmering on the horizon, is written down in another quiet room on the other side of the globe. “Mr. President, I see in the circumstances which I have enumerated a new proof of the superiority of mind to matter, of the independent existence of that part of our nature which we call the spirit, when it can thus subdue, enslave, and educate the subtilest, the most active, and in certain of its manifestations the most intractable and terrible, of the elements, making it in our hands the vehicle of thought, and compelling it to speak every language of the civilized world. I infer the capacity of the spirit for a separate state of being, its indestructible essence and its noble destiny, and I thank the great discoverer whom we have assembled to honor for this confirmation of my faith.” CHAPTER XI OTHER EVENTS IN BRYANT’S LIFE Among the remaining important events of the poet’s life, we must first speak of the publication of his poems. In 1822, the year after his marriage and while he was trying to practice law at Great Barrington, he was invited to deliver the usual poetical address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. For this occasion he wrote the poem of “The Ages,” with which his collected works now open. This poem secured him so much reputation that he published a very small volume of his works. There were but forty-four pages, but in that small space were printed some of the finest poems Bryant ever wrote. The copies did not sell very rapidly, and Bryant’s profit was not large. When he was old and famous, a young man said to him, “I have just bought a copy of the first volume of your poems. I paid twenty dollars for it.” “Hm!” said Bryant. “A good deal more than I got for writing it!”