illions. He had no children and the whole fortune went to his wife. She
at once proceeded to bestow it in carefully-considered benevolences, so
that the Sage millions are to benefit humanity, after all. In fact, it
is doubtful if any other fortune, amassed by a single man, will, in the
end, do so much good in the world as will this of Russell Sage, for Mrs.
Sage is devoting it to what may be called scientific charity, which has
for its object the universal betterment of mankind.

Mrs. Sage, who thus becomes one of the world's great philanthropists,
was Margaret Olivia Slocum, of Syracuse, New York, and was married to
Mr. Sage in 1869. She was of a family in only moderate circumstances,
and was a school teacher previous to her marriage. The turn of the wheel
made her the wealthiest woman in the world, and she proceeded without
delay to the carrying out of the immense benevolent enterprises which
she had doubtless long meditated.

The name of Cyrus West Field is so closely associated with his supreme
achievement, the laying of the first Atlantic cable, that we are apt to
forget that he was in the beginning a manufacturer and had amassed a
considerable fortune before his attention was called to the possibility
of linking Europe to America by a telegraph line laid on the bottom of
the Atlantic. It was under A. T. Stewart that Field received his
mercantile training, having gone to New York in 1834, at the age of
fifteen, from his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and entering
Stewart's employ as a clerk.

He was an apt pupil, and before he was of age, owned an establishment of
his own for the manufacture and sale of paper. In this business, in the
course of a dozen years, he had amassed a fortune so considerable that
he was able to retire from active charge of it, and to spend his time in
travel. It was in 1853 that the project of carrying a telegraph line
across the Atlantic ocean suggested itself to him during a conversation
with his brother, who was interested in building a line across
Newfoundland. The more he considered and investigated the project, the
more feasible it seemed, and he proceeded to organize the New York,
Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, himself taking one fourth of
the capital stock, and interesting such other capitalists as Peter
Cooper, Moses Taylor, Chandler White and Marshall Roberts.

But the project which had appeared simple enough in theory and on paper,
proved extremely difficult o