ed his friends in the
States, and got up, in 1856, the `New York, Newfoundland, and London
Telegraph Company,' which carried a line of telegraph through the
British Provinces, and across the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Saint
John's, Newfoundland--more than 1000 miles--at a cost of about 500,000
pounds. Then he came over to England and roused the British Lion, with
whose aid he started the `Atlantic Telegraph Company,' and fairly began
the work, backed by such men as Brett, Bidden, Stephenson, Brunel,
Glass, Eliot, Morse, Bright, Whitehouse, and a host of others. But all
this was not done in a day. Cyrus Field laboured for years among
preliminaries, and it was not until 1857 that a regular attempt was made
to lay an Atlantic cable. It failed, because the cable broke and was
lost. A second attempt was made in 1858, and was successful. In that
year, my boy, Ireland and Newfoundland were married, and on the 5th of
August the first electric message passed between the Old World and the
New, through a small wire, over a distance of above 2000 miles. But the
triumph of Field and his friends was short-lived, for, soon after,
something went wrong with the cable, and on the 6th September it ceased
to work."

"What a pity!" exclaimed Bob; "so it all went off in smoke."

"Not quite that, Bob. Before the cable struck work about 400 messages
had been sent, which proved its value in a financial point of view, and
one of these messages--sent from London in the morning and reaching
Halifax the same day--directed that `the 62nd Regiment was not to return
to England,' and it is said that this timely warning saved the country
an expenditure of 50,000 pounds. But the failure, instead of damping,
has evidently stimulated the energies of Mr Field, who has been going
about between America and England ever since, stirring people up far and
near, to raise the funds necessary for another attempt. He gives
himself no rest; has embarked his own fortune in the affair, and now, at
this moment, in this year of grace 1865, is doing his best, I have no
doubt, to induce our governor, Mr Lowstoft, to embark in the same boat
with himself."

It would seem as if Fred had been suddenly endowed with the gift of
second-sight, for at that moment the door of his employer's room opened,
and Mr Lowstoft came out, saying to his visitor, in the most friendly
tones, that he had the deepest sympathy with his self-sacrificing
efforts, and with the noble work t