A YOUNG MAN IN NEW YORK 21 
field, Massachusetts, with the little fund that he had saved. 
Such mills were being sold at low prices. But conditions were 
still difficult, and by October, he was in a mood to accept an 
offer from the firm of E. Root & Company, wholesale paper- 
dealers of Maiden Lane in New York City. The offer was for 
him to become a junior partner and promote sales in such 
cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Boston. 
The New York office was managed by the senior partner. As 
events afterward proved, Cyrus should have investigated the 
company’s finances more carefully before involving his future 
in a situation with which he was not familiar. ‘Things were 
going to happen that would make him wish himself safely 
back at Stewart & Company selling dry-goods. 
Two days after he was twenty-one, while his financial pros- 
pects were still in doubt, Cyrus somewhat rashly married 
Mary Bryan Stone of Guilford, Connecticut, which was near 
his father’s birthplace—not far from New Haven. Miss 
Stone’s father had died of yellow fever in Georgia many years 
previously. Since then the widow, with three children, had 
lived with her aged parents at Guilford. In a letter from New 
York announcing the coming marriage to his father and 
mother, Cyrus wrote, somewhat formally: ‘The writer of 
this intends to be joined in the bands of matrimony to Miss 
Mary B. Stone one week from this day, that is, on next Wed- 
nesday morning, December 2, 1840, at 10 o’clock A. M., and 
requests the pleasure of meeting you both, with sister Mary, 
at the house of Mr. A. S. Fowler in Guilford, at the above- 
mentioned time.” Letters were still mailed without enve- 
lopes; the postage was thirteen cents for short distances. 
Dr. Field came over to perform the ceremony from the 
near-by village of Haddam, Connecticut, where he was then 
pastor. Stephen, who had not yet sought his adventurous for- 
tune in California, acted as groomsman for his brother. ‘There 
were three kinds of cake, with wine, before the party drove 
to New Haven. On the next day, the newlyweds went to New 
