22 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
York by boat and started boarding in a house on Bond street, 
where they remained for two years, paying sixty dollars a 
month for the two. Housekeeping was a hard undertaking in 
those days of old-fashioned stoves and whale-oil lamps, with 
no regular system of running water, and was not to be under- 
taken rashly by a young couple. 
Four months after the wedding, the firm of E. Root & 
Company failed with large liabilities. Although Cyrus was 
not the principal, in some obscure manner the burden of 
debts fell upon him. Overwhelmed by this avalanche, he 
negotiated the best terms he was able with the creditors, pay- 
ing what he could, and thus released himself sufficiently from 
the rigid laws of the time to dissolve the firm and start a busi- 
ness of his own. This failure and the stern discipline inci- 
dental to doing business during the depression of the late 
thirties gave him a certain ruthlessness in attitude and out- 
look. Young men striving for success are apt to show ruthless- 
ness. 
He now took an office near the East River docks and organ- 
ized the wholesale-paper firm of Cyrus W. Field & Company. 
Later he took into the firm his brother-in-law, Joseph F. 
Stone. A long period of hard work was ahead, with debts 
hanging over. It was a discouraging beginning for a newly- 
married couple, but the marriage proved a singularly happy 
one. His family expenses during this early period of married 
life were about fifteen hundred dollars a year. There was an 
item of a willow cradle costing two dollars, and eighty-eight 
cents for repairing a silk hat. A doctor’s visit cost one dollar 
at that time. 
In 1842 the new Croton aqueduct brought adequate sup- 
plies of running water to the city that had suffered so from 
lack of it in the great fire of seven years before. Housekeeping 
was now made easier, especially as returning prosperity 
brought additional conveniences to city-dwellers. The Fields 
stopped boarding and rented a house in the suburbs at 87 
