r him, when there came
a torrent of ill-fortune--the loss of his beloved wife, and the
failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing
stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the
blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was
strongest and weakest--in his love and his pride.

His spirit would have been invincible if his heart had not been
broken. No husband and father was ever more solicitous for the
welfare of wife and children. The death of his wife, followed by the
disasters that overtook his sons, wounded him as mortally as if a
flight of arrows had pierced him. The very contingencies of fortune
against which he thought he had provided with infinite painstaking,
fell upon him as if from clouds in a sky he thought clear. His
deepest resolution was that, after the long strain of facing the
total loss of fortune during the dark years of the cable enterprise,
he never again would consent to take the chances of the catastrophe
that had haunted him, and from which he had escaped at such hazard
that the fortunate interposition seemed miraculous; and he did not
consciously do the wrong to himself and dear ones he had with such
anxiety sought to avoid. His misfortunes were as incalculable as
incurable.

The family affection of the Fields is one of their distinctions, and
the love the four brothers, known to all the world, bore each other,
was as gentle and full of all happiness as that of children. The
"little acts of kindness, little deeds of love," that, as the old
hymn says, would make the world an Eden, were never wanting. The
festivals in which they delighted were those of the family--the
eightieth birthday of the oldest brother--the golden wedding. In his
long travels, Mr. Field was ever thoughtful of home, and it was like
him, giving a dinner to a company of Americans in Edinburgh, to
telegraph to their families so that each guest found the news of
that day, from his own fireside, in a cablegram on his plate.

Mr. Field was no doubt attracted to Iceland, in 1874, by his studies
of the northern waters; the way the world tapers off in the high
latitudes, and the fact that Iceland must have been often in his
mind as he studied Newfoundland and Ireland, and knew that Iceland
was so near Greenland as to belong to the American continent, and to
have been a stepping-stone from Norway to Labrador. He was regarded
by the Icelanders as almost as great a man a