Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city, and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was uniform and marked--so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career. Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business, and to engage in no new schemes. He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D. Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe, and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr. Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr. Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say. At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the "Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to revive it by the aid of American capital. The scheme which he laid before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had granted the bankruptcy company: