The reply of Professor Morse showed equal interest in the subject, in proof of which he wrote that he would come down to New York to see Mr. Field about it. A few days after he came, and saw Mr. Field at his house. This was the beginning of an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship, and which henceforth united these gentlemen together in this great achievement. Professor Morse, in conversation, entered at length into the laws of electricity as applied to the business of telegraphing, and concluded by declaring his entire faith in the undertaking as practical; as one that might, could, and would, be achieved. Indeed, this faith he had avowed years before. In a letter written as early as August tenth, 1843, to John C. Spencer, then Secretary of the Treasury, Professor Morse had detailed the results of certain experiments made in the harbor of New York to show the power of electricity to communicate at great distances, at the close of which he says--in words that now seem prophetic: "The practical inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean! Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time will come when this project will be realized." It was the good fortune of Mr. Field--at that time and ever since--to have at hand an adviser in whose judgment he had implicit confidence. This was his eldest brother, David Dudley Field. They lived side by side on Gramercy Park, and were in daily communication. To the prudent counsels, wise judgment and unfaltering courage of the elder brother, the Atlantic Telegraph is more indebted than the world will ever know, for its first impulse and for the spirit which sustained it through long years of discouragement and disaster, when its friends were few. To this, his nearest and best counsellor, Mr. Field opened the project which had taken possession of his mind; and being strengthened by that maturer judgment, he finally resolved that, if he could get a sufficient number of capitalists to join him, he would embark in an enterprise which, beginning with the line to Newfoundland, involved in the end nothing less than an attempt to link this New World which Columbus had discovered, to that Old World which had been for ages the home of empire and of civilization. How the scheme advanced through the next twelve years, it will be our province to relate. FOOTNOTES: [A] Born November 30, 1819, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the son of a Congregational minister, of whom three sons are still living: Mr. David Dudley Field, of New York; Mr. Justice Stephen J. Field, of the Supreme Court of the United States; and the writer of the present volume. [B] From Cape Freels, Newfoundland, to Erris Head, Ireland, the distance is sixteen hundred and eleven miles; from Cape Charles, or Cape St. Lewis, Labrador, to the same point, the distance is sixteen hundred and one miles.