This double risk was now greatly reduced, if not entirely removed. The merchant need no longer send out orders a year beforehand, nor order a whole ship-load of tea when he needed only a hundred chests, since he could telegraph to his agent for what he wanted and no more. With this opportunity for getting the latest intelligence, the element of uncertainty was eliminated, and the importer no longer did business at a venture. Buying from time to time, so as to take advantage of low markets, he was able to buy cheaper, and of course to sell cheaper. It would be a curious study to trace the effect of the cable upon the prices of all foreign goods. A New York merchant, who has been himself an importer for forty years, tells me that the saving to the American people cannot be less than many millions every year. But the slender cord beneath the sea had finer uses than to be a reporter of markets, giving quotations of prices to counting rooms and banking houses; it was a link between hearts and homes on opposite sides of the ocean, bearing messages of life and death, of joy and sorrow, of hopes and fears. One of its happiest uses was the relief of anxiety. A ship sailed for England with hundreds of passengers, but did not arrive at her destination on the appointed day. Instantly a thousand hearts were tortured with fear, lest their loved ones had gone to the bottom of the sea, when the cable reported that the delay was due simply to an accident to her machinery, that would keep her back for a day or two, but that the good ship was safe with all on board. What arithmetic can compute the value of a single message that relieves so much anguish? Thus the submarine telegraph stretched out its long arms under the sea, to lay a friendly hand on two peoples, and give assurance to both.