But Babylonian or American, the success was enormous. As soon as the public became familiar with these elevated roads, and felt that they were safe as well as swift, the people swarmed upon them, in numbers constantly increasing, till now they carry over seven hundred thousand passengers a day! On the day of the Columbus celebration (October 12th) it was a million and seventy-five thousand! Indeed, if we are not staggered by numbers, we may sum up the whole in the amazing statement demonstrated by figures, that since these roads were opened, they have carried over eighteen hundred millions of passengers, more than the whole population of the globe! Nor should it be forgotten that, not only is the facility they afford the greatest, but the fares the lowest, for, thanks to Mr. Field, they were reduced years ago to five cents at all hours and for the longest distance, the ten miles from the Battery to the Harlem river. The effect was immediate in the appreciation of real estate in the city, the assessed value of which has already advanced by the sum of five hundred millions of dollars! The increased taxation is enough to pay for all the cost, while as a relief to the congested parts of the city, and as furnishing a means for that easy circulation, which is as necessary to a great city as a free circulation of the blood is to the human body, it is not too much to say that the construction of the elevated railroads is the greatest material benefit that has ever been conferred on the city of New York. But busy as Mr. Field was through all these years, much of his life was spent abroad. He had interests on both sides of the Atlantic, but stronger than his interests were his friendships to attract him across the sea. He had come to feel as much at home in England as in his own country: and his visits were so frequent that his sudden appearances and disappearances were a subject of amused comment to his English friends. When Dean Stanley was in America, a reception was given to him at the Century Club, where in a very happy address, he referred to the ties between the two countries, among which was "the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England, that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, passes his mysterious existence, appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in London and in New York!"